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r 


£Ije  biblical,  %  fcelesiasiital,  anb  %  IJfjHnsopIjital  Jfalum  of*#ob, 
anb  %  SJcaT*  formal  JBe%|jt  in  pirn* 

; 

- '■'*  "  ’.♦ 

FOUR  SERMONS, 

PREACHED  IN  THE 

| earjg  Sleeting  of  fragressito  Jtunfrs, 

#  • 

AT 

LONGWOOD,  PA.,  MAY  30th  AND  31st,  1858. 

i 

BY 

THEODORE  PARKER, 

Minister  of  the  XXVIIIth  Congregational  Society  in  Boston. 

N ... 


NEW  YORK : 

JOHN  F.  TROW,  PRINTER,  377  &  379  BROADWAY, 

OF  WHITE  STREET. 

1858. 


v 


Some  years  ago  I  spoke  to  you  “  Of  the  Relation  between  the  Eccle¬ 
siastical  Institutions  and  the  Religious  Consciousness  of  the  American 
People.”  I  am  now  here  again  to  speak  on  great  and  kindred  themes. 
You  have  no  authoritative  Scriptures;  your  Bible  is  the  Universe,  the 
World  of  Matter  your  Old  Testament,  the  World  of  Man  the  Mew.  In 
both  there  are'  revelations  every  day,  for  that  canon  is  not  closed,  nor  ever 
will  be.  With  the  catholic  spirit  of  Universal  Religion  one  of  your  Clerks 
has  just  read  from  the  Scriptures  of  the  Chinese,  the  Hindoos,  the  Persians, 
the  Mohammedans,  the  Hebrews,  and  the  Christians.  There  is  one  Mate¬ 
rial  Mature  about  us  all,  one  Human  Mature  in  us  all,  one  Divine  Mature, 
one  Infinite  God  above  us  all,  immanent  in  each,  and  equally  near  to  the 
Buddhist  and  the  Christian,  equally  loving  to  all.  He  is  no  respecter  r 
sects  more  than  of  persons.  I  wish  to  speak  of  the  notions  men  have 
God,  and  of  the  effect  thereof.  So,  if  your  business  allow  and  your  patiem 
will  endure  so  much,  I  will  preach  four  Sermons : 

I.  Of  the  Peogeessive  Development  of  the  Conception  of  God  ij 
the  Books  of  the  Bible. 

II.  Of  the  Ecclesiastical  Conception  of  God,  and  its  Relation  i 
the  Scientific  and  Religious  Wants  of  this  Age. 

III.  Of  the  Matueal  oe  Philosophical  Idea  of  God,  and  its  R 

LATION  TO  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  RELIGIOUS  WANTS  OF  THE  AGE. 

IV.  Of  the  Soul’s  Moemal  Delight  in  the  Infinite  God. 

These  are  all  great  themes,  of  interest  to  mankind — not  least,  Jx  think  , 
to  Progressive  Friends. 


SERMONS 


SERMON  I. 


THE  PROGRESSIVE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  GOD 
IN  THE  BOOKS  OF  THE  BIBLE. 

For  the  Lord  thy  God  is  a  consuming  fire. — Deut.  iv.  24. 

God  is  love. — 1  John  iv.  16. 


This  morning  I  ask  your  attention  to  some  Thoughts  on  the  Progressive 
>evelopment  of  the  Conception  of  God  in  the  various  Books  of  the  Bible. 


6 

J 


In  the  human  race  nothing  is  ever  still ;  the  stream  of  humanity  rolls 
continually  forward,  change  following  change ;  nation  succeeds  to  nation, 
theology  to  theology,  thought  to  thought.  Taken  as  a  whole,  this  change 
s  a  Progress,  an  ascent  from  the  lower  and  ruder  to  the  higher  and  more 
comprehensive.  Individuals  die,  special  families  pass  off,  nations  go  under  ; 
rad  a  whole  race,  like  the  American  Indians,  may  perisk,  and  their  very 
>lood  he  dried  up  from  the  ground ;  yet  still  mankind  survives,  and  all  the 
naterial  or  spiritual  good  achieved  by  any  race,  nation,  family,  individual, 
•everts  at  last  to  mankind,  who  not  only  has  eminent  domain  over  the 
earth,  but  is  likewise  heir  at  history  of  Moses,  of  the  Heraclides,  of  Egypt, 
Uid  of  the  American  Indians.  So  of  much  that  slips  out  from  the  decaying 
land  of  the  individual  or  the  race,  nothing  is  ever  lost  to  humanity much 
is  outgrown,  nought  wasted.  The  milk-teeth  of  the  baby  are  as  necessary 
\s  the  meat-teeth,  the  biters  and  grinders  of  the  adult  man.  Little  Ikie 
Newton  had  a  top  and  a  hoop ;  spinning  and  trundling,  were  as  needful  to 
the  boy  as  mathematical  rules  of  calculation  to  the  great  and  world- 
renowned  Sir  Isaac.  The  Progress  of  Mankind  is  continuous  and  onward, 
«‘is  much  subject  to  a  natural  law  of  development  as  our  growth  from  baby- 
liood  to  adult  life. 

You  see  this  change  and  progress  in  all  departments  of  human  activity, 
in  Religion  and  Theology,  as  distinct  as  in  spinning  and  weaving.  Theolog¬ 
ical  ideas  are  instruments  for  making  character,  as  carpenters’  tools  for 
inaking  houses.  Take  the  long  sweep  of  four  thousand  years  that  history 


-p  35717 


4 


runs  over,  and  the  improvement  in  theological  ideas  is  as  remarkable  as  t® 
change  in  carpenters’  tools.  You  see  this  progress  especially  in  the  Co" 
ception  of  God,  and  in  the  Worship  that  is  paid  to  him  conformable  to  tht 
conception.  Here  the  change  is  continuous,  and  the  progress  is  full 
encouragement  for  the  future. 

What  unlikeness  in  the  conceptions  of  God  which  Christian  men  ha 
to-day!  The  notion  of  God  set  forth  in  certain  churches  differs  froi' 
yours  and  mine  more  than  Moloch  differs  from  Jehovah.  Certainly  t 
God  which  some  ministers  scare  their  congregations  withal,  is  to  me  only 
a  Devil — a  Devil  who  has  no  existence,  and  never  appears  out  of  the  theo-| 
logical  graveyard,  where  this  ghost  of  buried  superstitions  “  walks  ”  fro 
time  to  time  to  frighten  men  into  the  momentary  panic  of  a  revival. 

The  Bible  has  become  the  Sacred  Book  of  all  Christendom.  It  is  no 
only  valued  for  its  worth,  which  is  certainly  very  great,  but  still  more  fo: 
its  fancied  authority — because  it  is  thought  to  be  a  Revelation,  made  dij 
rectly  and  miraculously  by  God,  to  certain  men  whom  he  inspired  wit' 
the  doctrine  it  contains.  Now,  God  must  know  himself,  and  that  perfect! 
and  if  he  make  a  revelation  thereof,  he  must  portray  himself  exactly 
he  is.  So  it  is  maintained  in  all  Christendom,  that  to  learn  the  charact 
of  God,  you  are  not  to  go  to  the  World  of  Matter,  or  to  the  World  of  Ma 
but  only  to  Revelation,  which  mirrors  back  to  you  his  exact  image  a 
likeness;  giving  you  God,  the  whole  of  God,  and  nothing  but  God.  Aj 
cordingly,  it  is  said  that  the  conception  of  God  is  the  same  in  all  parts 
the  Bible,  howsoever  old  or  new,  without  variableness  or  shadow 
turning. 

But  when  you-  come  to  look  at  the  Bible  itself,  and  study  it  part  b^ 
part,  and  then  put  the  results  of  your  study  into  a  whole,  you  find  a  re 
markable  difference  in  regard  to  the  character  of  God  himself,  that  de 
pends  on  the  ge^ral  civilization  and  enlightenment  of  the  times  and  th 
writers ;  the  further  you  go  back,  the  ruder  all  things  become.  Take  th 
whole  of  Greek  Literature,  from  Homer,  eleven  hundred  years  befon 
Christ,  to  Anna  Comnena,  eleven  hundred  years  after  him,  and  there  is 
great  change  in  the  poetic  representations  of  God.  The  same  thing  hap 
pens  in  the  books  of  the  Bible.  They  extend  over  twelve  or  thirteen  hun 
dred  years ;  it  may  be,  perhaps,  fourteen  hundred.  Perhaps  Genesis  is  th 
oldest  book,  and  the  Fourth  Gospel  the  newest.  What  a  difference  be 
tween  the  God  in  Genesis  and  that  in  the  Fourth  Gospel!  Can  any  thought 
ful  man  conceive  that  these  two  conflicting  and  various  notions  of  God 
could  ever  have  come  from  the  same  source  ?  Let  any  one  of  you  rea< 
through  the  book  of  Genesis,  and  then  the  Fourth  Gospel,  and  you  will  b 
astonished  at  the  diversity,  nay,  the  hostility  even,  between  the  God  ii 
the  old  book  and  the  new  one.  Then,  and  at  some  subsequent  time,  loo! 
at  the  various  books  between  the  two,  and  you  see  what  different  notion 
of  the  Divine  Being  there  are  in  this  “  infallible  miraculous  revelation 
God.” 


5 


Let  us  look  at  this  great  matter  in  some  details,  and  to  see  just  what  the 
facts  are,  and  make  the  whole  matter  as  clear  as  noonday  light,  divide  the 
Bible  into  its  three  great  parts,  the  Old  Testament,  the  Apocrypha,  and 
the  New  Testament.  In  the  Old  Testament,  Genesis  may  perhaps  have 
been  written  in  its  present  form,  about  a  thousand  years  before  Christ, 
though  some  scholars  put  it  a  few  hundreds  of  years  nearer  our  own  time ; 
at  any  rate  it  seems  to  have  been  compiled  from  ancient  documents,  some  of 
them,  perhaps,  existing  thirteen  or  fourteen  hundred  years  before  the  birth 
of  Christ,  though  others  are  clearly  later.  The  book  of  Daniel,  a  spurious 
work,  was  evidently  written  between  170  and  160  years  before  Christ.  In 
the  Apocrypha,  the  book  of  Ecclesiasticus  is,  perhaps,  the  oldest  work, 
and  seems  to  have  been  written  about  180  years  before  the  birth  of  Jesus. 
The  latest  book  is  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  of  uncertain  date.  In  the  New 
Testament,  Paul’s  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  is  the  oldest,  and  was  perhaps 
written  58  or  60  years  after  Christ;  the  Fourth  Gospel,  I  think,  is  the 
last,  and  was  written,  perhaps,  120  or  140  years  after  Christ.  There  are 
seventy  books  in  the  canonical  and  apocryphal  Bible.  With  the  exception 
of  fourteen  prophets,  Ezra,  Nehemiali,  David  and  Asaph — the  two  authors 
of  some  thirty  or  forty,  perhaps  fifty  of  the  Psalms, — we  know  the  name 
of  no  writer  of  the  nine-and-thirty  books  of  the  Old  Testament.  Of  the 
Ajfbcrypha  we  know  the  name  of  the  writer  of  the  book  of  Ecclesiasticus, 
of  him  no  more ;  of  others  not  even  that.  In  the  New  Testament  it  seems 
clear  that  Paul  wrote  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  that  to  the  Romans,  the 
two  to  the  Corinthians;  but  I  doubt  if  we  are  certain  who  wrote  any  other 
of  its  twenty-seven  books !  Here,  then,  out  of  seventy  biblical  books,  con¬ 
taining  the  writings  of  more  than  one  hundred  authors,  we  know  the 
names  of  fourteen  Hebrew  Prophets,  two  Psalmists,  two  other  writers  in 
the  Old  Testament,  one  in  the  Apocrypha,  one  in  the  New  Testament — 
twenty  men!  This  fact  that  we  know  so  little  of  the  authorship  of  the 
biblical  books  is  fatal  to  their  authority  as  a  standard  of  faith,  but  it  does 
not  in  the  smallest  degree  affect  their  value  as  religious  documents,  or  as 
signs  of  the  times  when  they  were  written.  I  don’t  care  who  made  the 
vane  on  the  steeple,  if  it  tell  which  way  the  wind  blows — that  is  all  I 
want :  I  don’t  know  who  reared  these  handsome  flowers ;  it  matters  not ; 
their  beauty  and  fragrance  tell  their  own  story.  We  know  the  time  the 
documents  came  from,  and  they  are  monuments  of  the  various  ages, 
though  we  know  not  who  made  or  put  them  together. 

Now  look  at  the  conception  of  God  in  the  first  and  last  of  these 
three  divisions.  Of  course,  in  the  brevity  of  a  morning’s  sermon  I  can  only 
select  the  most  remarkable  and  characteristic  things.  I  shall  begin  with 
the  oldest  part  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  end  with  the  latest  part  of  the 
New. 

I.  At  first,  it  seems,  the  Hebrews  believed  in  many  gods,  and  no  effort 
of  the  wisest  and  best  men  could  keep  the  nation  from  falling  back  to  idol¬ 
atry  for  centuries.  It  was  not  until  after  the  Babylonian  Captivity,  which 


6 


began  in  586  B.  0.,  and  ended  about  eighty  years  later,  that  the  Israelite  p 
renounced  their  idolatry ;  then  contact  with  monotheistic  and  civilize  1 
people  corrected  this  vice.  , 

At  first,  in  the  Bible,  Jehovah  appears  as  one  God  amongst  others,  an  j 
seems  to  have  his  council  of  gods  about  him.  Next  he  is  the  special  Go  ' 
of  the  descendants  of  Jacob,  and  called  the  God  of  Israel.  By  and  by  h  e 
is  represented  as  stronger  than  any  of  the  other  gods ;  he  can  beat  them  ?  \ 
battle,  though  sometimes  he  gets  worsted.  Finally  he  is  the  only  God, 
and  has  regard  for  all  nations,  though  he  still  takes  special  care  of  the 
Hebrews,  who  are  his  chosen  people.  The  book  of  Job,  I  think,  is  the 
only  one  in  the  Old  Testament  which  makes  it  appear  that  God  cares 
for  all  men  alike,  and  this  seems  to  be  the  only  book  in  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  which  was  not  written  by  a  Jew.  I  think  it  is  one  of  the  latest 
books  in  that  collection. 

Now  see  what  character  is  ascribed  to  God  in  the  earliest  documents 
of  the  Bible.  The  first  five  books  of  Moses  are  the  oldest ;  they  contain 
the  most  rude  and  unspiritual  ideas  of  God.  He  is  represented  as  a  very 
limited  and  imperfect  being.  He  makes  the  world  in  six  days,  part  by  part, 
one  thing  at  a  time,  as  a  mechanic  does  his  work.  He  makes  man  out  of 
dust,  in  “  his  own  image  and  likeness,”  breathes  into  him,  and  he  becomes 
a  living  soul.  God  looks  on  the  world,  when  he  has  finished  it,  and  ijs 
pleased  with  his  work,  “  and  behold  it  was  very  good.”  But  he  is  tired 
with  his  week’s  work,  rests  on  the  seventh  day,  and  “was  refreshed.”  Thje 
next  week  he  looks  at  his  work,  to  see  how  it  goes  on,  and  he  finds  that 
he  must  mend  it  a  little.  All  animals  rejoice  in  their  mates,  but  thought¬ 
ful  Adam  wanders  lone  ;  he  must  have  his  Eve.  So  God  puts  him  into  a 
deep  sleep,  takes  one  of  his  ribs,  makes  a  woman  of  it,  and  the  next  morn  ¬ 
ing  there  is  a  help  meet  for  him.  But  the  new  man  and  woman  behav  e 
rather  badly.  God  comes  down  and  walks  in  the  garden  in  the  cool  of  the 
day,  calls  Adam  and  Eve,  inquires  into  their  behavior,  chides  them  for  theiir 
misconduct,  and,  in  consequence  of  their  wrong  deed,  he  is  very  angry  with 
all  things,  and  curses  the  serpent,  curses  Eve,  curses  Adam,  and  even  th  e 
ground.  The  man  and  woman  have  tasted  of  the  Tree  of  Knowledge,  an  d 
he  turns  them  out  of  the  garden  of  Eden  lest  they  should  also  eat  of  th  e 
Tree  of  Life,  and  thereby  live  forever.  By  and  by  God  repents  that  1  le 
made  man,  and  “it  grieved  him  at  his  heart,”  they  behave  so  badly;  so 
in  his  wrath  he  sweeps  off  all  mankind,  except  eight  persons ;  but  aftt 3r 
the  flood  is  over,  Noah  offers  a  burnt  offering,  and  God  smells  the  swet  3t 
savor  and  is  pacified,  and  says  he  will  not  again  curse  the  ground ;  ar  id 
he  will  never  destroy  the  human  race  a  second  time. 

To  know  what  happens,  he  must  go  from  place  to  place  :  thus  he  unde-  r- 
stands  that  the  people  are  building  a  tower,  and  comes  near  enough  to  loo  k 
at  it,  and,  not  liking  the  undertaking,  he  says,  “  Go  to  jaow,  let  us  go  doV  'n 
and  confound  their  language,  that  they  may  not  understand  one  anothei  ’s 
speech  he  scatters  them  abroad,  and  they  cannot  build  the  tower,  whi(  h 
was  to  reach  up  to  heaven.  Afterwards  he  hears  bad  news  from  Sodo  tn 


< 


and  Gomorrah,  that  “  their  sin  is  grievous.”  He  does  not  quite  credit  the 
tidings,  and  says,  “  I  will  go  down  now,  and  see  whether  they  have  done 
altogether  according  to  the  cry  of  it,  which  is  come  unto  me,  and  if  not,  I 
will  know.”  He  talks  with  Abraham,  who  pleads  for  sparing  the  wicked 
city,  heats  Abraham  in  argument,  and,  “  as  soon  as  he  had  left  communing 
with  Abraham,”  “  the  Lord  went  his  way.” 

God  appears  to  men  visibly — to  Adam,  Noah,  Abraham,  Jacob,  and  to 
Moses.  He  talks  with  all  those  persons  in  the  most  familiar  way,  in  the 
Hebrew  tongue :  “  The  Lord  talked  to  Moses  face  to  face,  as  a  man  speak- 
eth  with  his  brother.”  He  makes  a  bargain  with  Abraham,  then  with 
Jacob  and  his  children.  It  is  solemnly  ratified,  for  good  and  sufficient 
consideration  on  both  sides.  It  is  for  value  received :  God  conveys  a  great 
quantity  of  land  to  Abraham  and  his  posterity,  and  guarantees  the  title ; 
they  are  to  circumcise  all  their  male  children  eight  days  after  birth  ;  that 
is  the  jocular  tenure  by  which  they  hold  Palestine.  God  swears  that  he 
will  keep  his  covenant,  and  though  sometimes  sorely  tempted  to  break  it, 
he  yet  adheres  to  the  oath  : 

“  And  though  he  promise  to  his  loss, 

He  makes  the  promise  good.” 

He  dines  with  Abraham,  coming  in  unexpected  one  day.  Abraham 
kills  a  calf,  “  tender  and  good.”  Sarah  makes  cakes  of  fine  meal,  extem¬ 
poraneously  baked  on  the  hearth.  Butter  and  milk  are  set  forth,  and  God, 
with  two  attendants,  makes  his  dinner  ! 

While  Moses  was  travelling  from  Midian  to  Egypt,  the  Lord  met  him 
at  a  tavern,  and  “  sought  to  kill  him,”  but  Moses’s  wife  circumcised  her  son 
before  God’s  eyes — so  God  let  the  “bloody  husband”  go. 

He  is  partial,  hates  the  heathen,,  takes  good  care  of  the  Jews,  not  be¬ 
cause  they  deserve  it,  but  because  he  will  not  break  his  covenant.  He  is 
jealous  ;  he  writes  it  with  his  own  finger  in  the  ten  commandments  :  “  I, 
the  Lord  thy  God,  am  a  jealous  God;”  and  again,  “  Jehovah ,  his  name  is 
jealous.”  He  is  vain  also,  and  longs  for  the  admiration  of  the  heathen, 
and  is  dissuaded  by  Moses  from  destroying  the  Israelites  when  they  had 
provoked  him,  lest  the  Egyptians  should  hear  of  it,  and  his  fame  should 
suffer. 

Look  at  this  account  of  one  of  God’s  transactions  in  Numb.  xiv.  “  And 
the  Lord  said  unto  Moses,  How  long  will  this  people  provoke  me  ?  And 
how  long  will  it  be  ere  they  believe  me,  for  all  the  signs  which  I  have 
showed  among  them  ?  I  will  smite  them  with  the  pestilence,  and  disin¬ 
herit  them,  and  will  make  of  thee  a  greater  nation,  and  mightier  than 
they.”  And  Moses  replied  :  “  Then  the  Egyptians  shall  hear  it,  and  they 
will  tell  it  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  land they  will  say,  “  Because  the 
Lord  was  not  able  to  bring  the  people  into  the  land  which  he  sware  unto 
them,  therefore  he  hath  slain  them  in  the  wilderness “  Pardon,  I  beseech 
thee,  the  iniquity  of  this  people!”  So,  lest  the  Gentiles  should  think  him 
weak,  Jehovah  lets  the  Hebrews  off  for  a  time,  and  instead  of  destroying 


8 


millions  of  men  at  once,  he  spreads  their  ruin  over  several  years.  “  In 
this  wilderness  they  shall  be  consumed,  and  there  they  shall  die !” 

He  is  capricious,  revengeful,  exceedingly  ill-tempered  ;  he  has  fierce 
wrath  and  cruelty ;  he  is  angry  even  with  the  Hebrews,  and  one  day  says 
to  Moses,  “  Take  all  the  heads  of  the  people  (that  is  the  leading  men,  the 
citizens  of  eminent  gravity),  and  hang  them  up  before  the  Lord  against  the 
sun.” 

Once  God  is  angry  with  the  people  who  murmur  against  Moses,  and 
says  to  him,  “  Get  you  up  from  among  this  congregation,  that  I  may  con¬ 
sume  them  as  in  a  moment  !”  Moses  is  more  merciful  than  his  God  ;  he 
must  appease  this  Deity,  who  is  “a consuming  fire.”  So  he  tells  Aaron, 

“  Take  a  censer,  and  put  fire  therein  from  off  the  altar,  and  put  on  incense, 
and  go  quickly  unto  the  congregation,  and  make  an  atonement  for  them  : 
for  there  is  wrath  gone  out  from  the  Lord  ;  the  plague  is  begun  !”  Aaron 
does  so,  and  the  plague  was  stayed,  though  not  till  the  fufy  of  the  Lord 
had  killed  fourteen  thousand  and  seven  hundred  men!  (Numb.  xvi. 
41-50).  God  hates  some  of  the  nations  with  relentless  wrath ;  Abraham 
interferes,  pleading  for  Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  Moses  for  the  Israelites,  but 
nobody  cares  for  the  rest  of  the  people,  or  burns  incense  for  them,  and  so 
God  says,  “I  will  utterly  put  out  the  remembrance  of  Amalek  from 
under  heaven.”  All  the  Canaanites,  the  Hittites,  the  Hivites,  the  Periz- 
zites,  the  Girgashites,  the  Amorites,  and  the  Jebusites,  are  to  be  rooted  out — 
seven  nations,  each  of  which  was  more  numerous  than  the  Hebrews :  u  Thou 
shalt  smite  them,  and  utterly  destroy  them ;  thou  shalt  make  no  covenant 
with  them,  nor  show  mercy  unto  them,”  saith  the  Lord.  The  Canaanites 
and  Moabites  were  kindred  of  the  Hebrews,  of  the  same  ethnologic  tribe, 
but  they  could  not  enter  into  the  congregation  of  the  Lord  unto  the  tenth 
generation ! 

'This  God — powerful,  terrible,  partial,  jealous,  often  ill-tempered,  wrath¬ 
ful,  cruel,  bloody — is  to  be  worshipped  with  sacrifice,  the  blood  of  bulls 
and  goats,  with  costly  spectacles  by  the  priesthood,  who  sacrifice  to  him  in  a 
special  place,  at  particular  times ;  and  God  gives  the  most  minute  directions 
how  all  this  shall  be  done,  hut  he  is  not  to  be  served  in  any  other  way, 
at  any  other  place. 

Such  seems  to  have  been  the  conception  of  God  with  the  leading  minds  . 
of  the  Hebrews  at  the  beginning  of  their  national  existence,  or  at  the 
later  day  when  the  early  books  were  deceitfully  compiled.  How  see  how 
much  they  outgrew  it  at  a  later  day. 

The  highest  Old  Testament  idea  of  God  you  find  in  the  Proverbs  and 
the  later  Psalms,  which  were  written  only  four  or  five  hundred  years  after 
the  promulgation  of  those  extraordinary  documents  which  I  have  just 
quoted.  In  these  God  is  represented  as  all- wise,  and  always  present  every¬ 
where.  You  all  remember  that  exquisite  Psalm,  the  cxxxixth,  “  Whither 
shall  I  go  from  thy  spirit?  or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  thy  presence?” 
There  God  is  unchangeable  ;  his  eyes  are  in  every  place,  beholding  the 
evil  and  the  good ;  no  thought  can  be  withheld  from  him.  What  grand 
and  beautiful  conceptions  of  God  are  there  in  Psalms  ciii.,  civ.,  cvii.  !  So  in 


*4 


9 


almost  the  whole  of  that  admirable  collection,  which  is  the  prayer-book 
of  Christendom  to-day,  and  will  be  till  some  man  with  greater  poetic 
genius,  united  with  the  tenderest  piety,  such  as  poets  seldom  feel,  shall 
come,  and,  in  the  language  of  earth,  sing  the  songs  of  the  Infinite  God. 

There  is  a  great  change  also  in  the  manner  of  worship.  At  first  it  was 
a  mere  external  act — offering  sacrifice,  a  bull,  a  goat,  a  lamb;  nay,  God 
commands  Abraham  to  sacrifice  Isaac,  and  the  father  is  about  to  comply, 
but  the  Deity  changes  his  own  mind  and  prevents  the  killing  of  the  boy. 
Listen  to  this  from  Psalm  li.‘,  and  see  what  a  change  there  is :  ‘‘Have 
mercy  upon  me,  0  God,  according  to  thy  loving-kindness,  according  unto 
the  multitude  of  thy  tender  mercies,  blot  out  my  transgressions.  Wash  me 
thoroughly  from  mine  iniquity,  and  cleanse  me  from  my  sin.  Create  in  me 
a  clean  heart,  0  God ;  and  renew  a  right  spirit  within  me.  Cast  me  not 
away  from  thy  presence;  and  take  not  thy  Holy  Spirit  from  me.  For 
thou  desirest  not  sacrifice ;  else  would  I  give  it :  thou  delightest  not  in 
burnt  offering.  The  sacrifices  of  God  are  a  broken  spirit,  a  broken  and  a 
contrite  heart,  O  God,  thou  wilt  not  despise.” 

Look  at  this  from  Hosea :  “  I  desire  mercy  and  not  sacrifice,  and  the 
knowledge  of  God  more  than  burnt-offering.”  Or  this  of  Micah  :  “  What 
doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly  and  love  mercy,  and  walk 
humbly  with  thy  God?”  What  a  progress  from  the  early  times!  But 
even  to  the  last  book  of  the  Old  Testament  there  is  the  same  wrath  of 
God.  The  world  has  seen  no  such  cursing  as  that  of  the  Jews  in  the  name 
of  Jehovah.  Take  the  cixth  Psalm,  and  I  will  defy  the  hardest  of  you  to 
wish  worse  and  crueller  things  than  the  author  imprecates  against  his 
enemies : — “  Set  thou  a  wicked  man  over  him  :  and  let  Satan  stand  at  his 
right  hand.  When  he  shall  be  judged,  let  him  be  condemned:  and  let  his 
prayer  become  sin.  Let  his  days  be  few ;  and  let  another  take  his  office. 
Let  his  children  be  fatherless,  and  his  wife  a  widow.  Let  his  children  be 
continually  vagabonds,  and  beg :  let  them  seek  their  bread  also  out  of 
their  desolate  places.  Let  the  extortioner  catch  all  that  he  hath ;  and  let 
the  stranger  spoil  his  labor.  Let  there  be  none  to  extend  mercy  unto  him ; 
neither  let  there  be  any  to  favor  his  fatherless  children.  Let  his  posterity 
be  cut  off;  and  in  the  generation  following  let  their  name  be  blotted,  out. 
Let  the  iniquity  of  his  fathers  be  remembered  with  the  Lord ;  and  let  not 
the  sin  of  his  mother  be  blotted  out.  Let  them  be  before  the  Lord  contin¬ 
ually,  that  he  may  cut  off  the  memory  of  them  from  the  earth . As 

he  clothed  himself  with  cursing  like  as  with  a  garment,  so  let  it  come 
into  his  bowels  like  water,  and  like  oil  into  his  bones,”  vs.  6-^.5,  18.  I 
quote  these  because  they  are  seldom  read,  while  the  devout  and  holy  por¬ 
tions  of  the  Psalms  are  familiar  to  all  men.  In  Bibles  which  have  laid  on 
the  pulpit  for  fifty  years,  and  those  read  in  private  from  generation  to  gen¬ 
eration,  the  best  parts  are  worn  out  with  continuous  use,  while  the  evil 
passages  are  still  fresh  and  new. 

I  think  no  Old  Testament  Jew  ever  got  beyond  this:  “Was  not  Esau 
Jacob’s  brother  ?  saith  the  Lord :  yet  I  loved  Jacob  and  hated  Esau,”  (Mai. 
i.  2,  3.)  A  Psalmist  speaks  of  God  as  pursuing  his  enemies  with  wrath 


10 


“like  a  mighty  man  that  shouteth  by  reason  of  wine.”  The  Lord  God  of 
Israel  says  to  his  people,  “  I  myself  will  fight  against  you  with  an  out¬ 
stretched  hand,  and  with  a  strong  arm,  even  in  anger,  and  in  fury,  and  in 
great  wrath.”  “  I  have  set  my  face  against  this  city  for  evil  and  not  for 
good.”  If  they  do  not  repent,  his  “  fury  will  go  forth  like  fire,  and  burn 
that  none  can  quench  it ;”  and  “  this  house  shall  become  a  desolation.” 

Here  is  a  terrible  picture  of  the  Hebrew  God,  sketched  by  the  hand  of 
a  great  master  some  time  after  the  Babylonian  Captivity.  There  had  been 
a  great  battle  between  the  Edomites  and  Hebrews ;  God  comes  back  as  a 
conqueror,  the  people  see  him,  and  the  following  dialogue  takes  place : 

People : — Who  is  this  that  cometh  from  Edom  ? 

In  scarlet  garments  from  Bozrah  ? 

This  that  is  glorious  in  his  apparel, 

Proud  in  the  greatness  of  his  strength? 

Jehovah: — I  that  proclaim  deliverance, 

And  am  mighty  to  save,  j 

People: — Wherefore  is  thine  apparel  red, 

And  thy  garments  like  those  of  one  that  treadeth  the  wine- vat  ? 

Jehovah: — I  have  trodden  the  wine-vat  alone, 

And  of  the  nations  there  was  none  with  me. 

And  I  trod  them  in  mine  anger, 

And  I  trampled  them  in  my  fury, 

So  that  their  life-blood  was  sprinkled  upon  my  garments, 

And  I  have  stained  all  my  apparel. 

For  the  day  of  vengeance  was  in  my  heart — 

/I  trod  down  the  nations  in  my  anger; 

I  crushed  them  in  my  fury, 

And  spilled  their  blood  upon  the  ground.”  * 

“  Home-keeping  youths  have  ever  homely  wits,”  says  the  proverb ;  it 
is  not  less  true  of  nations  than  of  men.  The  religious,  but  idolatrous  Jews 
met  a  monotheistic  people  in  their  captivity  in  Babylon,  and  came  back 
with  better  ideas.  Yet  much  of  the  old  theological  evil  lingered  still. 
Ezra,  Nehemiah,  and  the  author  of  the  book  of  Daniel,  devout  men,  in¬ 
tensely  bigoted,  knew  only  “  the  great  and  dreadful  God ;  ”  that  is  the 
name  the  last  of  them  calls  Jehovah.  But  from  the  first  five  books  of  the 
Old  Testament  to  the  Proverbs  and  later  Psalms  there  is  great  progress. 

II.  You  come  to  the  New  Testament,  and  here  you  do  not  find  much 
literary  excellence  in  the  writers.  Wild  flowers  of  exquisite  beauty  spring 
up  aroundvthe  feet  of  Jesus ;  only  in  the  Kevelation  do  you  find  any  thing 
which  indicates  a  large  talent  for  literature,  neither  the  nature  which  is  born 
in  the  man  cf  genius,  nor  the  art  which  comes  from  exquisite  culture.  The 
Fourth  Gospel  was  writ,  apparently,  by  some  Alexandrian  Greek,  a  man  of 
nice  philosophic  culture  and  fancy.  Paul  had  great  power  of  deductive  logic. 
A  grand  poetic  imagination  appears  in  that  remarkable  book,  the  Apoca- 
v  lypse.  But,  taken  as  a  whole,  in  respect  to  literary  art,  the  New  Testament 


Dr.  Noyes’s  Translation. 


11 


is  greatly  inferior  to  the  best  parts  of  the  Apocrypha  and  Old  Testament. 
It  compares  with  Job,  the  Psalms,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ecclesiasticns,  and  the 
"Wisdom  of  Solomon,  as  the  works  of  the  early  Quakers  compare  with 
Hooker,  Taylor,  Herbert,  Cudworth  and  Milton  ;  and  yet,  spite  of  the  lack 
fo  culture,  literary  art,  and  poetic  genius,  in  the  Hew  Testament  as  in  Fox, 
Nayler,  Penn,  and  other  early  Quakers,  there  is  a'  spirit  not  to  be  found 
in  the  well-born  and  learned  writers  who  went  before. 

1.  In  the  New  Testament,  look  first  at  the  conception  which  Jesus  has 
of  God.  I  shall  take  it  only  from  the  first  three  Gospels.  In  that  accord¬ 
ing  to  Matthew  I  think  we  have  his  early  notion  of  God.  He  calls  him 
Father.  The  same  word  is  now  and  then  applied  to  God  in  the  Old  Tes¬ 
tament,  but  there  I  think  it  means  only  Father  to  the  Jews,  not  to  other 
nations.  But  it  seems  that  some  of  the  Greeks  and  Jews  in  Jesus’s  own 
time  applied  it  to  him,  as  if  he  were  the  father  of  all  men.  As  Jesus 
makes  the  Lord’s  Prayer  out  of  the  litanies  which  were  current  in  his 
time,  so  he  uses  the  common  name  for  the  Deity  in  the  common  sense. 
With  him  God  alone  is  good,  and  our  Father  which  is  in  heaven  is  per¬ 
fect.  “  He  maketh  his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  on  the  good,  and 
sendeth  rain  on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust.”  He  pities  and  forgives  the 
penitent,  as  in  that  remarkable  story  of  the  Prodigal  Son.  With  what 
tender  love  does  Jesus  say,  u  There  is  joy  in  heaven  over  one  sinner  that 
repenteth,  more  than  over  ninety  and  nine  just  persons,  who  need  no  re¬ 
pentance.”  Such  noble  thoughts  come  out  in  that  time  as  “  shines  a  good 
deed  in  a  naughty  world.”  But  what  becomes  of  the  impenitent  wicked? 
God  has  no  love  for  them ;  they  shall  go  into  everlasting  punishment.  So 
alongside  of  God  there  is  a  Devil,  and  to  the  left  hand  of  heaven,  there  is 
a  dreadful,  fiery,  endless  hell,  whither  a  broad  way  leads  down,  and  the 
wide  gates  stand  ever  open,  and  many  there  be  who  go  in  thereat. 

At  first  Jesus  limited  his  teachings  to  the  Jews;  he  would  not  take  the 
children’s  bread  and  give  it  unto  the  dogs ;  he  declared  that  not  a  jot  or 
tittle  of  the  Mosaic  ceremonial  law  should  ever  fail ;  he  told  his  disciples 
to  keep  all  that  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  commanded,  because  they  sat  in 
Moses’s  seat.  But  by-and-by  he  nobly  breaks  with  Judaism,  violates  the 
ritual  law,  puts  his  new  wine  into  new  bottles.  With  admirable  depth  of 
intuitive  sight  he  sums  up  religion  in  one  word,  Love — love  to  God  with 
all  the  heart,  and  to  one’s  neighbor  as  himself.  Fear  of  God  seldom  ap¬ 
pears  in  the  words  of  Jesus.  Fear  is  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament, 
Mercy  is  better  than  sacrifice.  Men  go  up  to  heaven  for  righteousness  and 
philanthropy,  and  no  question  is  asked  about  creed  or  form.  Other  men 
go  down  to  hell  for  ungodliness ;  and  no  straining  at  a  gnat  would  ever 
save  him  who  would  swallow  down  a  whole  camel  of  iniquity.  Human 
literature  cannot  show  a  dearer  example  of  tenderness  to  a  penitent  wicked 
man  than  you  see  in  the  story  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  which  yet  the  first 
Evangelist  rejected,  and  two  others  left  without  mention. 

All  nationality  disappears  before  Jesus.  His  model  man  is  a  Samaritan. 
We  hear,  that  word  commonly  used,  and  do  not  understand  that  the  Jews 
hated  a  Samaritan  as  the  old  New  England  Federalists  hated  a  Jacobin,  as 


12 


the  British  used  to  hate  a  Frenchman,  or  as  a  Southern  slaveholder  hates 
a  Black  Republican  to-day.  Depend  upon  it,  it  created  as  much  sensation 
amongst  men  who  heard  it  when  Jesus  told  this  story  of  the  Good 
Samaritan,  as  it  would  in  Virginia  to  have  some  one  represent  a  Negro  as 
superior  to  all  the  “first  families”  of  the  State,  on  account  of  some  great 
charity  that  he  had  done. 

I  do  not  find  that  Jesus  altered  the  common  idea  of  God  which  he 
found.  He  was  too  intent  on  practical  righteousness  to  attend  to  that. 
Besides,  he  was  cut  off  when  but  about  thirty  years  of  age ;  had  he  lived 
longer,  it  may  be  that  he  would  have  reformed  the  popular  notion  of 
God ;  for  there  are  some  things  in  the  words  that  drop  like  honey  from 
his  lips  which  to  me  indicate  a  religious  feeling  far  beyond  his  thought. 

2.  In  the  writings  of  Paul  you  find  more  speculation  about  God  than 
with  Jesus;  for  Paul  was  mainly  a  theological  man,  as  Jesus  was  mainly 
a  pious  and  philanthropic  man.  Jesus  could  start  a  great  religious  move¬ 
ment;  Paul  could  make  a  theology  out  of  his  hints,  and  found  a  sect.  But 
the  most  important  characteristic  of  Paul’s  idea  of  God  is  this :  God’s 
wrath  was  against  all  ungodliness  in  Jew  or  Gentile,  and  he  was  as  ac¬ 
cessible  to  Gentile  as  to  Jew.  Nationality  vanishes;  all  men  are  one  in 
Christ  Jesus ;  God  is  God  to  all,  to  punish  the  wicked  and  reward  the 
righteous  who  have  faith  in  Christ;  the  Jews  are  as  wicked  as  the  rest 
of  mankind,  and  are  to  be  equally  saved  by  faith  in  Christ,  and  by  that 
alone.  Paul’s  Christ  is  not  the  Jesus  of  History,  but  a  mythological 
being  he  conjured  up  from  his  own  fancy.  He  says  that  the  invisible  God 
is  clearly  made  known  by  the  visible  material  world,  and  conscience  an¬ 
nounces  God’s  law  to  the  Gentiles  as  effectually  as  revelation  declares  it  to 
the  Jews.  That  is  a,  great  improvement  on  the  Old  Testament  idea  of 
God,  as  presented  even  in  the  Psalms. 

3.  In  the  Fourth  Gospel  and  the  First  Epistle  attributed  to  John — both 
incorrectly  attributed  to  him — the  idea  of  God  goes  higher  than  elsewhere 
in  the  New  Testament.  God  is  mainly  love.  He  dwells  in  the  souls 
of  men  who  love  each  other  and  love  him,  and  is  to  be  worshipped  in 
spirit  and  in  truth,  not  only  in  Jerusalem,  but  anywhere  and  everywhere. 
Perfect  love  casteth  out  fear. 

This  God  has  an  Only-begotten  Son,  to  whom  he  has  given  the  Spirit 
without  measure,  put  all  things  under  his  hand ;  he  who  believes  on  the 
Son  shall  have  everlasting  life,  but  he  who  does  not  believe  on  the  Son 
shall  not  see  life.  Christ’s  commandment  is  that  they  love  one  another, 
and  to  those  God  will  give  another  Comforter,  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  who 
shall  abide  with  believers  forever ;  nay,  Christ  will  manifest  himself  to 
them. 

But  this  God  has  created  a  Devil,  who  will  send  alUunbelievers  into 
endless  torment. 

Thus  ends  the  last  book  of  the  New  Testament.  What  a  change  from 
Genesis  to  the  Fourth  Gospel!  What  a  difference  between  the  God  who 
eats  veal  and  fresh  bread  with  Abraham,  and  commands  him  t q  make  a 
burnt  offering  of  his  own  son,  who  conveys  all  Palestine  on  such  a  jocular 


13 


tenure,  and  the  God  whom  no  man  hath  seen  at  any  time ;  who  is  Spirit 
and  is  to  be  worshipped  in  spirit  and  in  truth ;  who  is  love,  and  who 
dwells  with  all  loving  and  believing  souls!  There  are  I  know  not  how 
many  hundred  years  between  the  two — what  a  series  of  revolutions !  what 
vast  progress  of  mankind  had  filled  up  that  brief  period  of  time! 

But  the  idea  of  God  which  you  gather  from  the  Bible  is  quite  unsatis¬ 
factory  to  a  thoughtful  and  deeply  religious  man  to-day.  In  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  there  is  no  God  who  loves  the  Gentiles ;  he  made  the  world  for  the 
Jews  ;  all  others  are  only  servants — means,  not  ends.  This  being  so,  the 
Hebrew  thought  himself  the  only  favorite  of  God;  his  patriotism  became 
intense  contempt  for  all  other  nations — was  a  part  of  his  religion.  In  the  * 
Hew  Testament,  the  God  whom  even  Jesus  sets  before  mankind  has  no 
love  for  the  wicked;  there  is  no  Providence  for  them;  at  the  last  judg¬ 
ment  he  sends  them  all  to  hell,  bottomless,  endless,  without  hope;  their 
worm  dieth  not,  their  fire  is  not  quenched ;  no  Lazarus  from  Abraham’s 
bosom  will  ever  give  Dives  a  single  drop  of  water  to  cool  his  tongue, 
tormented  in  that  flame.  Jesus  tells  of  God,  also  of  the  Devil ;  of  hea¬ 
ven,  with  its  eternal  blessedness  awaiting  every  righteous  man,  and  of  the 
eternal  torment  not  less  open  and  waiting  for  every  one  who  dies  impeni¬ 
tent.  Paul  narrows  still  more  this  love  of  God  towards  men ;  it  includes 
only  such  as  have  faith  in  Christ ;  no  man  is  to  be  saved  who  does  not  be¬ 
lieve  in  Paul’s  idea  of  Christ.  The  author  of  the  Apocalypse  constricts  it 
still  further  yet ;  he  would  cast  out  Paul  from  heaven;  Paul  is  called  a 
“  liar,”  “  of  the  Synagogue  of  Satan,”  and  other  similar  names.  The 
Fourth  Gospel  limits  salvation  to  such  as  believe  the  author’s  theory  of 
Christ,  that  he  was  a  God,  and  the  only-begotten  Son  of  God,  an  idea 
which  none  of  the  three  Evangelists,  nor  Paul,  nor  James,  nor  Simon 
Peter,  seems  ever  to  have  entertained.  I  think  that  Jesus  never  held 
such  a  doctrine  as  what  Paul  and  the  writer  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  makes 
indispensable  to  salvation. 

To  the  Jews  every  Gentile  seemed  an  outcast  from  God’s  providence. 
To  the  early  followers  of  Jesus  all  unbelievers  were  also  outcasts ;  “  he  that 
believeth  and  is  baptized  shall  be  saved,  but  he  that  believeth  not  shall  be 
damned.”  I  find  no  adequate  reason  for  thinking  Jesus  ever  spoke  these* 
words,  found  only  in  the  doubtful  addition  to  the  second  canonical  Gos¬ 
pel.  Yet  there  seems  evidence  enough  to  show  that  Jesus  himself  really 
taught  that  ghastly  doctrine,  that  a  great  wickedness  unrepented  of  entailed 
eternal  damnation  on  an  immortal  soul !  Paul  says  human  love  never  fails ; 
it  suffers  long  and  is  kind,  and  yet  both  he  and  the  man  whom  he  half 
worshipped,  teach  that  God  has  no  love  for  the  wicked  man  who  dies  in 
his  impenitence ;  endless  misery  is  his  only  destination.  Neither  in  the 
Old  Testament  nor  in  the  New  do  you  find  the  God  of  infinite  perfection, 
infinite  power,  wisdom,  justice,  love;  it  is  always  a  limited  God,  a  Deity 
with  imperfect  wisdom,  justice,  love ;  God  with  a  Devil  beside  him,  the 
created  fiend  getting  the  victory  over  his  Creator !  The  Bible  does  not 
know  that  Infinite  God,  who  is  immanent  in  the  World  of  Matter  and  Man, 


14 


and  also  lives  in  these  flowers,  in  yonder  stars,  in  every  drop  of  blood  in 
our  veins ;  who  works  everywhere  by  law,  a  constant  mode  of  operation 
of  natural  power  in  Matter  and  in  Man.  It  is  never  the  dear  God  who  is 
responsible  for  the  welfare  of  all  and  each,  a  Father  so  tender  that  he  loves 
the  wickedest  of  men  as  no  mortal  mother  can  love  her  only  child. 
Does  this  surprise  you?  When  mankind  was  a  child,  he  thought  as  a  child, 
and  understood  as  a  child ;  when  he.  becomes  a  man  he  will  put  away 
childish  things. 

How  full  of  encouragement  is  the  fact  of  such  a  growth  in  man’s  con¬ 
ception  of  God,  and  his  mode  of  serving  him !  In  the  beginning  of  He- 
•  brew  history,  great  power,  great  self-esteem,  and  great  destructiveness,  are 
the  chief  qualities  that  men  ascribe  to  God.  Abraham  would  serve  him 
by  sacrificing  Isaac ;  Joshua,  a  great  Hebrew  filibuster,  by  the  butchery  of 
whole  nations  of  men,  sparing  the  cattle,  which  he  might  keep  as  property, 
but  not  the  women  and  children.  This  was  counted  service  of  God,  and 
imputed  to  such  marauders  for  righteousness.  In  the  notion  of  God  set 
forth  in  the  Fourth.  Gospel  and  the  First  Epistle  ascribed  to  John,  it  is 
love  which  preponderates,  and  by  love  only  are  men  to  serve  God.  With 
Jesus  it  is  only  goodness  which  admits  men  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and 
there  is  no  question  asked  about  the  nation,  creed,  or  form  ;  but  this  sweet 
benediction  is  pronounced:  “Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  unto  the  least  of  these 
my  brethren,  ye  did  it  unto  me;”  “  Come,  ye  blessed,  inherit  the  kingdom 
prepared  for  you  from  the  foundation  of  the  world !  ” 

Shall  you  and  I  stop  where  the  New  Testament  did?  We  cannot,  if 
we  would,  and  it  is  impious  to  try.  What  if  Moses  had  been  content  with 
the  Egyptian  chaos  of  a  Deity,  “  where  every  clove  of  garlic  was  a  god  ;  ” 
what  if  Jesus  had  never  broke  with  the  narrow  bounds  of  Judaism;  what 
if  Paul  had  been  content  with  “  such  as  were  Apostles  before  him,”  and 
had  stuck  at  new  moons,  full  moons,  circumcision  and  other  abominations, 
which  neither  he  nor  his  fathers  were  able  to  bear ;  where  would  have 
been  the  Christian  Church,  and  where  the  progress  of  mankind  ?  No,  we 
shall  not  stop  !  It  would  be  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  Moses,  and  still  more 
contrary  to  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  to  attempt  to  arrest  the  theological  and  re- 
'ligious  progress  of  mankind. 

God  in  Genesis  represents  the  conception  of  the  babyhood  of  humanity. 
Manhood  demands  a  different  conception.  All  round  us  lies  the  World  of 
Matter,  this  vast  world  above  us  and  about  us  and  beneath ;  it  proclaims 
the  God  of  Nature;  flower  speaking  unto  flower,  star  quiring  unto  star; 
a  G<>d  who  is  resident  therein,  his  law  never  broke.  In  us  is  a  World 
of  Consciousness,  and  as  that  mirror  is  made  clearer  by  civilization,  I  look 
down  andJjehold  the  Natural  Idea  of  God,  Infinite  Cause  and  Providence, 
Father  and  Mother  to  all  that  are.  Into  our  reverent  souls  God  will  come 
as  the  morning  light  into  the  bosom  of  the  opening  rose.  Just  in  propor¬ 
tion  as  we  are  faithful,  we  shall  be  inspired  therewith,  and  shall  frame 
“  conceptions  equal  to  the  soul’s  desires,”  and  then  in  our  practice  keep 
those  “  heights  which  the  soul  is  competent  to  win.” 


SERMON  II. 

THE  ECCLESIASTICAL  CONCEPTION,  OF  GOD,  AND  ITS  RELATION 
TO  THE  SCIENTIFIC  AND  RELIGIOUS  WANTS  OF  MAN. 

The  great  and  dreadful  God. — Daniel  ix.  4. 

Our  Father  which  art  in  heaven. — Matthew  vi.  9. 


In  the  Religion  of  civilized  man  there  are  three  things: — Piety — 
the  love  of  God,  the  Sentimental  part;  Morality — obedience  to  God’s 
natural  laws,  the  Practical  part;  and  Theology — thoughts  about  God 
and  Man  and  their  relation,  the  Intellectual  part.  The  Theology  will 
have  great  influence  on  the  Piety  and  the  Morality,  a  true  Theology  help¬ 
ing  the  normal  development  of  Religion,  which  a  false  Theology  hinders. 
There  are  two  methods  of  creating  a  Theology, — a  scheme  of  doctrines 
about  God  and  Man,  and  the  relation  between  them,  viz. :  the  Ecclesiasti¬ 
cal  and  the  Philosophical.* 

The  various  sects  which  make  up  the  Christian  Church  pursue  the  Ec¬ 
clesiastical  method.  They  take  the  Bible  for  a  miraculous  and  infallible 
revelation  from  God — in  all  matters  containing  the  truth,  the  whole  truth, 
and  nothing  but  the  truth — and  thence  derive  their  doctrines,  Catholic, 
Protestant,  Trinitarian,  Unitarian,  Damnationist  or  Salvationist.  Of 
course  they  follow  that  method  in  forming  the  Ecclesiastical  Conception 
of  God,  in  which  the  Christian  sects  mainly  agree.  They  take  the 
whole  of  the  Bible,  from  Genesis  to  the  Fourth  Gospel,  as  God’s  miracu¬ 
lous  affidavit;  they  gather  together  all  which  it  says  about  God,  and 
from  that  make  up  the  Ecclesiastical  Conception  as  a  finality.  The 
Biblical  sayings  are  taken  for  God’s  deposition  as  to  the  facts  of  his  nature, 
character,  plan,  modes  ©f  operation — God’s  word,  his  last  word  ;  they  are 
a  finality — all  the  evidence  in  the  case ;  nothing  is  to  be  added  thereto,  and 
naught  taken  thence  away.  Accordingly  the  statement  of  a  writer  in  the 
half-savage  age  of  a  ferocious  people  is  just  as  valuable,  true,  and  obligatory 
for  all  time,  as  that  of  a  refined,  enlightened,  religious  man  in  a  civilized 
age  and  nation ;  for  they  are  all  equally  God’s  testimony  in  the  case,  his 
miraculous  deposition  ;  God  puts  himself  on  his  voir  dire ,  and  it  is  of  no 
consequence  which  justice  of  revelation  records  the  affidavit  of  the  Divine 
Deponent.  The  deposition  is  alike  perfect  and  complete,  whether  attested 
by  an  anonymous  and  half-civilized  Hebrew  fillibuster,  or  by  a  refined  and 
religious  Christian  philosopher.  The  statement  that  God  ate  veal  at 
Abraham’s,  or  that  he  sought  to  kill  Moses  in  a  tavern,  is  just  as  true  and 


*  See  Mr.  Parker’s  Sermon  of  “  False  and  True  Theology.” — February,  1858. 


16 


important  as  this,  that  “  God  is  love.”  It  is  said  in  the  Old  Testament 
that  the  Lord  is  a  “  consuming  fire ;  ”  he  is  “  angry  with  the  wicked  every 
day,”  and  keeps  his  anger  for  ever ;  that  he  hates  Esau ;  that  he  gives  cruel 
commands,  like  that  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy,  forbidding 
all  religious  progress ;  that  he  orders  the  butchery  of  millions  of  innocent 
men,  including  women  and  children ;  that  he  comes  back  from  the  de¬ 
struction  of  Edom  red  with  blood,  as  described*in  the  sixty-third  chapter  of 
Isaiah.  In  the  New  Testament  he  is  called  Father ;  it  is  said  that  he  is 
Love,  that  he  goes  out  and  meets  the  returning  prodigal  a  great  ways  off, 
and  welcomes  him  with  large  rejoicing. 

Now,  say  the  Churches,  all  these  statements  are  true,  and  the  Christian 
believer  must  accept  them  all.  Eeason  is  not  to  sift  and  cross-examine 
the  Biblical  testimony,  rejecting  this  as  false  and  including  that  as  true  ; 
for  the  whole  of  this  evidence  and  each  part  of  it  is  God’s  affidavit,  and 
does  not  require  a  cross-examining,  sifting,  amending.  We  are  not  to 
reconcile  it  to  us,  but  us  to  it ;  and  if  it  conflict  with  reason  and  conscience, 
we  should  give  them  up.  All  the  Bible,  says  this  theory,  is  the  inspired 
Word  of  God,  and  one  part  is  just  as  much  inspired  as  another,  for  there 
are  no  degrees  of  inspiration  therein ;  each  statement  by  itself  is  perfect, 
and  the  whole  complete.  The  test  of  inspiration  is  pot  in  man ;  it  is  not 
Truth  for  things  reasonable,  nor  Justice  for  things  moral,  nor  Love  for 
things  aflfectional.  The  test  is  wholly  outside  of  man ;  it  is  a  Miracle — 
that  is,  the  report  of  a  miracle  ;  and  so  what  contradicts  the  universal  hu¬ 
man  conscience  is  to  be  accepted  just  as  readily  as  what  agrees  with  the 
moral  instinct  and  reflection  of  all  human  kind.  In  the  third  century  Ter- 
tullian,  a  hot-headed  African  Bishop,  said,  “I  believe,  because  it  is  impos¬ 
sible  ;  ”  that  is,  the  thing  cannot  be,  and  therefore  I  believe  it  is !  It  has 
been  a  maxim  in  ecclesiastical  theology  ever  since ;  without  it  both  Transub- 
stantiation  and  the  Trinity  would  fall  to  the  ground,  with  many  a  doctrine 
more.  I  think  Lord  Bacon  was  an  unbeliever  in  the  popular  ecclesiastical 
doctrines  of  his  time ;  he  would  derive  all  science  from  the  observation 
of  nature  and  reflection  thereon ;  but  he  left  this  maxim  to  have  Eminent 
Domain  in  Theology !  It  was  enough  for  him  to  break  utterly  with  the 
Philosophy  of  the  Schools ;  he  would  not  also  quarrel  against  the  Theology 
of  the  Churches :  thereby  he  lost  his  scientific  character,  but  kept  his  eccle¬ 
siastical  reputation. 

Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun,  was  a  Hebrew  fillibuster,  with  a  half-civilized 
troop  of  ferocious  men  following  him ;  he  conquered  a  country,  butchered 
the  men,  women,  and  children ;  and  he  gives  us  such  a  picture  of  God  as 
you  might  expect  from  a  Pequot  Indian  in  the  days  of  our  fathers.  It  is 
taught  in  the  Churches  that  Joshua’s  statement  about  God  is  just  as  trust¬ 
worthy  as  the  sublime  words  in  the  New  Testament,  ascribed  to  John  or 
Jesus,  and  far  more  valuable  than  the  deepest  intuitions,  and  the  grandest 
generalizations  of  the  most  cultivated,  best  educated,  and  most  religious 
of  men  to-day  !  The  Christian  Churches  do  not  derive  their  conception 
of  God  from  the  World  of  Observation  about  us,  or  the  World  of  Con- 


17 


sciousness  within  us,  but  from  the  “  Book  of  Revelation,”  as  they  call  that 
collection  from  the  works  of  some  hundred  writers,  mostly  anonymous, 
and  all  from  remote  ages ;  and  they  tell  us  that  the  teachings  of  Joshua  are 
of  as  much  value  as  the  teachings  of  Jesus  himself,  far  more  than  those  of 
Fenelon  or  Channing. 

Now  from  such  facts,  and  by  such  a  method,  the  Christian  sects  have 
formed  their  notion  of  God,  which  is  common  to  the  Greek,  the  Latin,  and 
the  Teutonic  Churches ;  only  a  few  sects  have  departed  therefrom,  and  as 
they  are  but  insignificant  in  numbers,  and  have  had  scarcely  any  influence 
in  forming  the  ecclesiastical  conception  of  God,  so  I  shall  omit  all  reference 
to  them  and  their  opinions. 

To-day  I  shall  not  speak  of  the  ecclesiastical  Arithmetic  of  God,  onl^r 
of  the  Ethics  thereof ;  not  of  God  according  to  the  category  of  number — 
the  quantitative  distribution  of  Deity  into  personalities ;  only  of  the  char¬ 
acter  of  God  by  the  category  of  substance — the  qualitative  kind  of  Deity, 
for  that  is  still  the  same,  whether  conceived  of  in  one  person,  in  three,  or 
in  three  million,  just  as  the  qualitative  force  of  an  army  of  three  hundred 
thousand  soldiers  is  still  the  same,  whether  you  count  it  as  one  corps  or  as 
three. 

Look  beneath  the  mere  words  of  theology,  at  the  things  which  they 
mean,  and  you  find  in  general  that  the  ecclesiastical  conception  of  God 
does  not  include  Infinite  Perfection.  It  embraces  all  the  true  and  good 
things  from  the  most  religious  and  enlightened  writers  of  the  Bible,  but  it 
also  contains  all  the  ill  and  false  things  which  were  uttered  by  the  most 
rude  and  ferocious  ;  one  is  counted  just  as  true  and  valuable  as  the  other. 
Accordingly  God  is  really  represented  as  a  limited  being,  exceedingly  im¬ 
perfect,  having  all  the  contradictions  which  you  find  between  Genesis  and 
the  Fourth  Gospel ;  he  is  not  infinite  in  any  one  attribute.  I  know  the 
theological  language  predicates  infinite  perfection,  but  the  theological  facts 
affirm  exceeding  imperfection.  Look  at  this  in  several  details. 

1.  God  is  not  represented  as  Omnipresent.  When  the  theologian  says, 
“God  is  everywhere,”  he  does  not  mean  that  God  is  everywhere  always, 
as-ie  is  anywhere  sometimes ;  not  that  he  is  at  this  minute  present  in  this 
meeting-house,  and  in  the  air  which  my  hand  clasps,  as  he  was  in  the 
Hebrew  Holy  of  Holies  when  Solomon  ended  his  inauguration  prayer,  as 
he  always  is  in  some  place  called  the  Heaven  of  Heavens.  There  are  degrees 
of  the  Divine  Presence ;  he  is  more  there  and  less  here.  Some  spots  he 
occupies  by  his  essence,  others  only  potentially.  He  was  creationally 
present  with  all  his  personal  essence  at  the  making  of  the  world,  but  only 
providentially  present  with  his  instrumental  power,  not  his  personal 
essence,  at  the  governing  of  the  world.  Thus  the  Queen  of  England,  by 
her  power,  is  present  in  all  Great  Britain  and  the  British  possessions,  while 
by  her  person  she  occupies  only  a  single  apartment  of  the  Palace  of  St. 
James  in  London,  sitting  in  only  one  chair  at  a  time.  So  it  is  taught  that 
2 


18 


God  must  intervene  miraculously  to  do  his  work  :  must  come  into  a  place 
where  he  was  not  before,  and  which  he  will  vacate  soon.  So  the  actual, 
personal,  essential  and  complete  presence  of  God  is  the  very  rarest  excep¬ 
tion  in  all  places  save  Heaven.  He  is  instantial  only  in  Heaven,  excep¬ 
tional  everywhere  else.  He  is  not  universally  immanent,  residing  in  all 
matter,  all  spirit,  at  every  time,  working  according  to  law,  by  a  constant 
mode  of  operation  and  in  all  the  powers  Qf  matter  and  man,  which  are  de¬ 
rived  from  him  and  are  not  possible  without  him ;  but  he  comes  in  occa¬ 
sionally  and  works  by  miracle.  He  is  a  non-resident  God,  who  is  present 
in  a  certain  place  vicariously,  by  attorney,  and  only  on  great  occasions 
comes  there  in  his  proper  person.  That  is  the  ecclesiastical  notion  of  Om¬ 
nipresence. 

2.  He  is  not  All-Powerful,  except  in  the  ideal  Heaven  which  he  perma¬ 
nently  occupies  by  his  complete  and  personal  presence.  On  earth  he  is 
restricted  by  Man,  who  thwarts  his  plans  every  day  and  grieves  his  heart, 
and  still  more  by  the  Devil,  who  continually  thwarts  his  Creator.  I  know 
the  ecclesiastical  doctrine  says  that  God  is  omnipotent,  but  ecclesiastical 
history  represents  him  as  trying  to  make  the  Hebrews  an  obedient  people, 
and  never  effecting  it ;  as  continually  worrying  over  that  little  fraction  of 
mankind,  “  rising  up  early  and  speaking  ”  to  them,  but  the  crooked  would 
not  be  made  straight.  Hay,  he  is  unable  to  keep  the  Christian  Church  with¬ 
out  spot  or  wrinkle  for  a  single  generation,  charm  he  never  so  wisely;  but 
Paul  fell  out  with  such  as  were  apostles  before  him,  and  the  seamless  ec¬ 
clesiastical  coat  is  roughly  rent  in  twain  betwixt  the  two  ! 

3.  He  is  not  All-Wise.  He  does  not  know  how  his  own  creation  will 
work.  He  finished  the  world,  and  found  that  his  one  man,  running  alone, 
did  not  prosper ;  it  was  necessary  to  make  a  woman,  to  help  him  ;  she  was 
an  afterthought.  Her  first  step  ruins  the  man  she  was  meant  to  serve ;  and 
God  is  surprised  at  the  disobedience.  He  must  alter  things  to  meet  this 
unexpected  emergency ;  he  grows  wiser  and  wiser  by  continual  experi¬ 
ment. 

4.  He  is  not  All-Righteous.  He  does  great  wrong  to  the  Egyptians, 
for  he  hardens  Pharaoh’s  heart,  so  that  he  may  have  an  excuse  for  putting 
the  king  and  people  to  death.  He  does  injustice  to  the  Canaauites,  whom 
he  butchers  by  Joshua ;  he  provides  a  punishment  altogether  dispropor¬ 
tionate  to  the  offences  of  men,  and  will  make  them  suffer  forever  for  the  sin 
committed  by  their  mythological  ancestor,  six  thousand  years  before  you 
and  I  were  born  ;  he  creates  souls  by  the  million,  only  to  make  them  perish 
everlastingly.  In  the  whole  course  of  human  history,  you  cannot  find  a 
tyrant,  murderer,  kidnapper,  who  is  so  unjust  as  God  is  represented  by  the 
ecclesiastical  theology. 

5.  He  is  not  All-Loving.  Of  the  people  before  Christ,  he  loved  none 
but  Jews  ;  he  gave  no  other  any  revelation,  and  without  that,  they  must 
perish  everlastingly!  Since  Jesus  he  loves  none  but  Christians,  and  will 
save  no  more ;  the  present  heathen  are  to  die  the  second  death ;  and  of 
Christians  he  loves  none  but  Church-members.  Nay,  the  Catholics  will 


19 


have  it,  that  he  hates  everybody  out  of  the  Roman  Church,  while  the 
stricter  Protestants  retaliate  this  favor  upon  the  Catholics  themselves. 
Kay,  they  deny  salvation  to  all  Unitarians  and  Universalists,  to  the  one 
because  they  declare  that  the  man  Jesus  was  not  God  the  Creator ;  and  to 
the  other  because  they  say  that  God  the  Father  is  not  bad  enough  to  damn 
any  man  forever  and  ever.  You  remember  that  scarcely  was  Dr.  Channing 
cold  in  his  coffin,  before  orthodox  newspapers  rung  with  the  intelligence 
that  he  was  doubtless  then  suffering  the  pangs  of  eternal  damnation,  because 
he  had  “denied  the  Lord  that  bought  him.”  You  know  the  damnation 
pronounced  on  old  Dr.  Ballou,  simply  because  he  said  men  were  brethren, 
and  the  God  of  earth  and  heaven  is  too  good-hearted  to  create  anybody 
for  the  purpose  of  crunching  him  into  hell  forever  and  ever.  According 
to  some  strict  sectarians,  God  loves  none  but  the  elect — an  exceedingly  small 
number.  It  has  been  the  doctrine  of  the  Christian  Church  for  fifteen  or 
sixteen  hundred  years  that  God  will  reject  from  heaven  all  babies  newly- 
born  who  die  without  baptism ;  the  sprinkling  of  infants  was  designed  to 
save  these  little  ones,  who,  as  Jesus  thought,  needed  no  salvation,  but 
were  already  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Accordingly,  to  save  the  souls  of 
children  ready  to  perish  without  ecclesiastical  baptism,  the  Catholic 
Church  mercifully  allows  doctors,  nurses,  mid  wives,  servants,  anybody,  to 
baptize  a  child  newly  born,  by  throwing  water  in  its  face,  in  the  name  of 
the  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  and  that  saves  the  little  thing.  But  the 
doctrine  of  infant  damnation  follows  logically  from  the  first  principles  of 
the  ecclesiastical  theology.  “  He  that  believeth  and  is  baptized  shall  be  . 
saved,  and  he  that  believeth  not  shall  be  damned!” 

6.  He  is  not  All-Holy,  perfectly  faithful  to  himself.  He  is  capricious 
and  variable;  men  can  wheedle  him  into  their  favorite  plans;  now  by 
penitence  or  a  certain  belief,  they  can  induce  God  to  remove  the  con¬ 
sequences  of  their  wicked  deeds;  and  the  effects  of  a  long  life  of  wicked¬ 
ness  will  all  at  once  be  miraculously  wiped  clean  off  from  the  man’s  char¬ 
acter  ;  he  will  take  the  blackest  of  sinners  and  wash  him  white  in  the  blood 
of  the  Lamb,  and  “in  five  minutes  he  shall  be  made  as  good  a  Christian  as 
he  could  become  by  fifty  years  of  the  most  perfect  piety  and  morality.” 
Since  God  is  thus  changeable,  men  think  they  can  alter  his  plan  by  their 
words,  can  induce  him  to  send  rain  when  they  want  it,  or  to  “  stay  the 
bottles  of  heaven  ”  at  their  request,  to  check  disease,  to  curse  a  bad  man, 
or  to  pervert  and  confound  the  intellect  of  a  thinking  man.  Hence  comes 
the  strange  phenomenon  which  you  sometimes  see  of  a  nation  assembling  in 
the  churches,  and  asking  God  to  crush  to  the  ground  another  people  at  war 
with  them ;  two  years  ago  you  saw  Englishmen  bending  their  knees  in  the 
name  of  Christ,  to  ask  God  to  blast  the  Russians  at  Sebastopol,  and  the  Rus¬ 
sians  bending  their  knees  and  in  the  same  name  asking  God  to  sink  the 
British  ships  in  the  depths  of  the  Black  Sea ! 

Put  all  these  things  together — God  is  not  represented  as  a  perfect  Creat¬ 
ing  Cause,  who  makes  all  things  right  at  first ;  nor  a  perfect  Preserving 
Providence,  who  administers  all  things  well,  and  will  bring  all  out  right  at 


20 


last.  Even  his  essential  presence  is  only  an  exception  in  the  world,  here 
for  a  moment,  and  then  long  withdrawn.  According  to  the  ecclesiastical 
conception,  God  transcends  man  in  power  and  wisdom,  but  is  im¬ 
mensely  inferior  to  the  average  of  men  in  justice  and  benevolence ;  nay, 
in  hate  and  malignity  he  transcends  the  very  worst  man  that  the  very 
worst  man  could  conceive  of  in  his  heart! 

I.  Now,  this  idea  of  God  is  not  adequate  to  the  purposes  of  Science. 
To  explain  the  World  of  Matter,  the  naturalist  wants  a  sufficient  power 
which  is  always  there,  acting  by  a  constant  mode  of  operation;  not  irreg¬ 
ular,  vanishing,  acting  by  fits  and  starts ;  but  continuous,  certain,  reliable ; 
an  intelligent  power  which  acts  by  law,  not  caprice  and  miracle.  No 
other  God  is  adequate  Cause  of  the  Universe,  or  of  its  action  for  a  single 
hour. 

But  the  Christian  Church  knows  no  such  God,  for  all  the  Biblical 
depositions  concerning  him,  all  the  pretended  affidavits  whence  it  has 
made  its  conception  of  God,  came  from  men  who  had  no  thought  of  a 
general  law  of  matter  or  of  mind,  and  no  notion  of  a  God  who  acted  by  a 
constant  mode  of  operation,  and  who  was  the  indwelling  Cause  and  Pro¬ 
vidence  of  all  things  that  are.  Just  so  far  as  any  scientific  thinker  departs 
from  that  limited  idea  of  God,  who  comes  and  goes  and  works  by  miracle, 
so  far  does  he  depart  from  the  ecclesiastical  theology  of  Christendom. 
The  actual  facts  of  the  Universe  are  not  reconcilable  with  what  the  eccle¬ 
siastical  theology  teaches  about  God.  This  has  become  apparent,  step  by 
step,  in  the  last  three  centuries. 

Galileo  reported  the  facts  of  astronomic  nature  just  as  they  were.  The 
Roman  Church  must  silence  her  philosopher,  or  else  revolutionize  her 
notion  of  God.  Had  not  she  God’s  own  affidavit  that  he  stopped  the  sun 
and  moon  a  whole  day,  to  give  Joshua  time  for  butchery  of  men,  women, 
and  children?  would  she  allow  a  philosopher  to  contradict  her  with 
nothing  but  the  Universe  on  his  side  ?  He  must  swear  the  earth  stands 
still.  “And  yet  it  does  move  though!  ” 

Geologists  relate  the  facts  of  the  universe  as  they  find  them  in  the 
crust  of  the  earth.  The  Churches  complain  that  these  facts  are  inconsist¬ 
ent  with  the  story  in  Genesis.  “We  have,”  say  they,  “  God’s  deposition 
that  he  made  the  Universe  in  six  days,  rested  on  the  seventh,  and  was  re¬ 
freshed  !  What  is  the  testimony  of  the  rocks  and  the  stars,  to  the  anony¬ 
mous  record  on  parchment,  or  the  printed  English  Bible  ?  ”  So  the  geolo¬ 
gist  also  has  a  bad  name  in  the  Churches,  many  equivocate,  and  some  lie. 

For  the  history  of  the  heavens  and  earth,  theologians  would  rely  on  the 
word  of  a  man  whose  name  even  they  know  nothing  of,  and  reject  the 
testimony  of  the  Universe  itself,  where  the  footprints  of  the  Creator  are 
yet  so  plain  and  deeply  set.  Zoologists  find  evidence,  as  they  think,  that 
the  human  race  has  had  several  distinct  centres  .of  origination  ;  that  men 
were  created  in  many  places :  and  a  great  outcry  is  at  once  raised.  Such 
facts  are  inconsistent  with  the  ecclesiastical  idea  of  God !  So,  to  learn  the 


21 


structure  of  the  heavens,  the  earth,  or  of  mankind,  you  must  not  go  to  the 
heavens,  the  earth,  or  mankind ;  you  must  go  to  the  Book  of  Genesis,  and 
if  the  facts  of  the  Universe  contradict  the  anonymous  record  therein,  then 
you  must  break  with  the  Universe  and  agree  with  the  minister,  for  the  ac¬ 
tual  testimony  of  things  is  worth  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  words  of  a 
Hebrew  writer  whom  nobody  knows ! 

The  great  obstacle  to  the  advancement  of  science,  nay,  to  the  diffusion 
of  knowledge,  is  not  the  poverty  of  mankind,  not  the  lack  of  industry,  tal¬ 
ent,  genius  amongst  men  of  science ;  but  it  is  the  ecclesiastical  conception 
of  God.  Hot  a  step  can  be  taken  in  astronomy,  geology,  zoology,  but  it 
separates  a  man  from  that  notion.  The  ecclesiastical  conception  of  God 
being  thus  utterly  inadequate  to  the  purposes  of  science,  philosophic  men 
turn  off  from  the  theology  of  Christendom and  some,  it  is  said,  become 
atheists.  Look  at  the  scientific  men  of  England,  France,  and  Germany, 
for  proof  of  this.  In  America  there  is  no  considerable  class  of  scientific 
and  learned  men,  who  stand  close  together,  write  books  for  each  other, 
and  so  make  a  little  public  of  their  own ;  so  here  the  scientific  man  does 
not  stand  in  a  little  green-house  of  philosophy  as  in  Europe,  where  he  is 
sheltered  from  public  opinion,  lives  freely,  and  expands  his  flowers  in  an 
atmosphere  congenial  to  his  natural  growth,  but  he  is  exposed  to  all  the 
rude  blasts  of  the  press,  the  parlor,  and  the  meeting-house ;  so  is  he  more 
cautious  than  his  congeners  and  equivalents  in  Europe,  and  does  not  com¬ 
monly  tell  what  he  thinks ;  nay,  sometimes  tells  what  he  does  not  think, 
lest  he  should  lose  his  public  reputation  amongst  bigoted  men !  To  this 
there  are  some  very  honorable  exceptions;  scientific  men  who  do  not' 
count  it  a  part  of  their  business  to  prop  up  a  popular  error,,  but  who 
know  society  has  a  right  to  demand  that  they  tell  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth.  But  if  you  will  take  the  hundred  fore¬ 
most  men  of  science  in  all  Christendom  who  are  not  ministers,  I  do  not 
think  that  ten  of  them  have  any  belief  in  the  common  ecclesiastical  con¬ 
ception  of  God.  Some  have  better — nay,  a  true  idea  of  God,  but  dare  not 
divulge  it;  and  some,  alas!  seem  to  have  no  notion  at  all.  Accordingly, 
men  of  science  turn  from  theology;  some  become  atheists,  and  all  lose 
much  from  lack  of  a  satisfactory  idea  of  God.  You  all  know  what  clerical 
complaints  are  made  of  the  infidelity  and  atheism  of  scientific  men.  Three 
hundred  years  ago  the  Church  suspected  doctors,  and  invented  this  pro¬ 
verb: — “As  many  doctors,  so  many  atheists;”  because  the  doctors  knew 
facts  irreconcilable  with  the  ecclesiastical  theology.  I  think  the  charge 
of  atheism  grossly  unjust,  when  it  is  brought  against  the  great  body  of 
scientific  men  ;  but  where  it  is  true,  it  ought  to  be  remembered  that  in  the 
last  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  the  Christian  Church  has  had  no  idea  of 
God  adequate  to  the  purposes  of  science,  and  fit  for  a  philosopher  to  ac¬ 
cept;  and  if  it  be  so,  will  you  blame  the  philosopher  for  rejecting  what 
would  only  disturb  his  processes  ?  The  cause  of  the  philosopher’s  atheism 
often  lies  at  the  Church’s  door,  and  not  in  the  scholar’s  study. 


22 


II.  But  this  ecclesiastical  conception  of  God  is  as  inadequate  to  the 
purposes  of  Beligion,  as  of  Science.  In  religious  consciousness  we  all 
want  a  God  whom  we  can  absolutely  rely  upon  ;  who  is  always  at  hand, 
not  merely  separate  and  one  side  from  the  World  of  Matter  or  the  World 
of  Man.  We  want  a  deity  who  acts  now,  and  is  the  Infinite  God,  who 
desires  the  best  of  possible  things  for  each  man,  who  knows  the  best  of  pos¬ 
sible  things,  and  has  will  and  power  to  bring  about  the  best  of  possible 
things,  and  that  for  all  persons.  We  want  a  God  all-powerful,  all- wise, 
all-just,  all -loving,  all-faithful ;  a  perfect  Creator ;  a  perfect  Provider,  who 
will  be  just  to  each  of  his  children.  I  put  it  to  each  one  of  you — thought- 
fulest  or  least-thinking — is  there  one  of  you  who  will  be  content  with  a  God 
who  does  not  come  up  to  your  highest  conception  of  power,  wisdom,  jus¬ 
tice,  love,  and  holiness?  Not  one  of  you  will  be  content  to  rely  on  less  ! 
You  must  falsify  your  nature  before  you  can  do  it.  But  according  to  the 
ecclesiastical  conception,  God  is  the  most  capricious,  unjust,  unreliable  of 
all  possible  beings.  Look  at  this  old  and  venerable  doctrine  of  eternal 
damnation,  believed  by  all  the  Christian  sects,  save  the  Universalists, 
Unitarians,  and  Spiritualists — not  yet  a  sect— 1who  make  at  the  most  some 
four  or  five  millions  out  of  the  two  hundred  and  fifty  or  sixty  millions  of 
Christendom.  This  is  the  doctrine : — God  is  angry  with  mankind,  and 
will  burn  the  greater  part  of  them  in  hell,  forever  and  ever.  Why  is 
“  his  wrath  so  hot  against  us  ?” 

1.  The  Jews  are  God’s  ancient  covenant  people;  with  them  he  made 
a  bargain,  sworn  to  on  both  sides  :  it  was  for  a  good  and  sufficient  consider¬ 
ation,  value  received  by  each  party;  he  commanded  them  to  observe  the 
Mosaic  form  of  religion  forever  ;  if  any  prophet  shall  come,  working  never 
so  many  miracles,  and  teach  them  a  different  conception  of  God,  they 
must  put  him  to  death,  and  all  his  followers,  with  their  wives,  their  chil¬ 
dren,  and  their  cattle.  (Deut.  xiii.)  But  now  all  these  “chosen  people”  are 
to  be  damned  forever  because  they  do  not  believe  the  theology  of  Paul 
and  Jesus,  whom  the  Divine  law  commands  the  Jews  to  slay  with  the  edge 
of  the  sword  for  teaching  that  theology.  So  God  commands  the  Jews  to 
kill  every  man  among  them  who  shall  teach  the  Christian  doctrine,  and  yet 
will  damn  them  for  not  believing  it. 

2.  The  Heathen  also  are  to  be  damned  because  they  have  no  faith  in 

Christ,  no  belief  in  the  popular  theology  of  the  Catholic  or  Protestant 
sects.  But  that  theology  is  unreasonable,  and  thoughtful,  unprejudiced 
men  cannot  believe  it ;  besides  that,  the  greater  part  of  the  Heathens  never 
heard  of  such  doctrines,  or  of  Christ ;  still  God  will  damn  them,  millions 
by  millions,  to  eternal  torment,  because  they  have  not  believed  what  was 
never  preached  to  them,  what  they  never  heard  they  must  believe.  Three 
hundred  years  ago  Spanish  Jesuits  preached  the  doctrine  of  eternal  dam¬ 
nation  to  the  heathen  at  Japan,  who  asked  of  the  missionaries,  “Is  it  pos¬ 
sible  that  God  will  damn  men  forever  ?  ”  “  Certainly,  without  doubt,” 

was  the  reply.  “  And  if  a  man  dies  who  has  not  heard  of  these  things  be¬ 
fore,  will  God  damn  him  forever?  ”  “  Yes,”  was  the  answer.  The  whole 


23 


multitude  fell  on  their  faces  and  wept  bitterly  and  long,  and  would  not  be¬ 
lieve  it.  Do  you  blame  them  for  casting  ithose  priests  from  the  island, 
and  saying,  “  Let  the  salt  sea  separate  us  from  the  Christian  world  for¬ 
ever.” 

3.  Then  the  Christians  themselves  are  not  certain  of  their  salvation. 
The  Catholics  are  the  majority,  and  they  say  God  will  damn  all  the  Prot¬ 
estants  ;  the  Protestants  say  the  same  of  tlie  Catholics.  The  ecclesiastical 
idea  of  God  in  both  represents  him  as  ready  enough  to  damn  either ;  and  if 
the  first  principle  of  the  Catholic  Church  be  true,  no  Protestant  can  be 
saved ;  and  if  the  first  principle  of  the  Protestant  Church  be  true,  then 
every  Catholic  is  sure  of  damnation  and  nought  besides. 

See  how  the  Protestants  dispose  of  one  another. 

(1.)  All  “unconverted”  and  positively  wicked  men  are  to  he  damned  ; 
God  has  no  love  for  them,  only  hate. 

(2.)  All  “unconverted”  men,  not  positively  wicked;  they  have  no  sal¬ 
vation  in  them ;  they  may  be  the  most  pious  men  in  the  world,  the  most 
moral  men,  but  their  own  religion  cannot  save  them.  They  must  have 
“  faith,” — that  is  belief  in  the  ecclesiastical  theology — and  be  Church-mem¬ 
bers  ;  that  is,  they  must  believe  as  Dr.  Banbaby  believes,  and  be  voted 
into  some  little  company  called  a  Church,  at  the  Old  South  or  the  New 
North,  or  some  other  conventicle. 

(3.)  New-born  babies  not  baptized  must  be  shut  out  from  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  if  not  included  in  the  kingdom  of  hell ;  such  has  been  the 
doctrine  of  the  Christian  Church  from  the  time  of  Justin  Martyr,  who  I 
think  first  broached  it  seventeen  hundred  years  ago,  and  it  follows  with  un¬ 
avoidable  logic  from  the  ecclesiastical  notion  of  God  and  the  ecclesiastical 
method  of  salvation.  So  Jesus  must  have  made  a  great  mistake  when  he 
took  babies  in  his  arms,  and  blessed  them,  and  said,  “  Suffer  little  children 
to  come  unto  me,  and  forbid  them  not,  for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of 
heaven ;  ” — he  ought  to  have  said,  “  Suffer  baptized  children  to  come  unto 
me,”  &c. 

Now  what  confidence  can  you  have  in  such  a  God,  so  unjust,  so  un¬ 
loving,  so  cruel,  and  so  malignant  ?  I  just  now  said  that  God  is  represented 
as  transcending  men  in  hate  and  malignity.  Look  at  the  matter  carefully, 
narrowing  the  thing  down  to  the  smallest  point.  Suppose  there  are  now  a 
thousand  million  persons  on  the  e^rth,  and  that  only  one  shall  be  damned ; 
and  suppose  that  some  day  a  hundred  years  hence,  all  the  nine  hundred  and 
ninety-nine  million,  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  thousand,  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  of  us  are  gathered  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  enjoying  all 
the  blessedness  that  Divine  love  can  bestow  on  tho  vast  faculties  of  man, 
still  further  enhanced  by  the  first  taste  of  immortal  life ;  suppose  that  in¬ 
telligence  is  brought  to  all  and  each  of  us  that  one  man  is  miserable,  lan¬ 
guishing  in  eternal  fire,  to  be  there  forever ;  suppose  we  are  told  that  a 
globe  of  sand,  big  as  this  earth,  hangs  there  before  his  comprehensive  eye, 
and  once  in  a  thousand  years  a  single  atom  is  loosened  and  falls  off,  and  he 


24 


shall  suffer  the  cruelest  torment  till,  grain  by  grain,  millennium  after  mil¬ 
lennium,  that  whole  globe  is  consumed  and  passed  away ;  and  yet  then  he 
shall  be  no  nearer  the  end  of  his  agony  than  when  he  first  felt  the  smart. 
Suppose  we  are  told  it  was  the  worst  man  of  all  the  earth,  that  it  was  a  mur¬ 
derer,  a  violator  of  virgins,  a  pirate,  a  kidnapper,  a  traitorous  wretch,  who, 
in  the  name  of  Democracy,  sought  to  establish  a  despotism  in  America,  to 
crush  out  the  fairest  hopes  of  political  freedom  which  the  sun  ever  sbonf1 
upon ;  or  even  it  was  an  ecclesiastical  hypocrite,  with  an  atheistic  heart, 
believing  in  no  God,  and  loving  no  man,  who,  for  the  sake  of  powqr  and 
ambition,  sought  to  make  men  tremble  at  the  ugly  phantom  of  a  wrathful 
Deity,  and  laid  his  unclean  hands  on  the  soul  of  man,  and  made  that  a 
source  of  terrible  agony  to  mankind  !  When  you  are  told  that  this  man 
is  plunged  into  hell  for  all  time,  is  there  a  man  who  would  not  cry  out 
against  the  hideous  wrong,  and  scorn  heaven  offered  by  such  a  Deity  ? 
No!  there  is  no  murderer,  no  pirate,  no  violator  of  virgins,  no  New  Eng¬ 
land  kidnapper,  no  betrayer  of  his  nation,  no  ecclesiastical  hypocrite  even, 
who  would  not  reject  it  with  scorn,  and  revolt  against  the  injustice.  But 
the  ecclesiastical  doctrine  represents  God  as  thus  damning  not  one  man, 
but  millions  of  millions  of  men,  the  great  majority  of  mankind,  nine  hun¬ 
dred  and  ninety-nine  out  of  every  thousand,  and  those,  too,  often  the  best, 
certainly  the  wisest  and  most  loving  and  pious  men !  Do  you  wonder 
then,  that  thoughtful  men,  moral  men,  affectional  men,  and  religious  men 
turn  off  with  scorn  from  this  conception  of  God  ?  I  wonder  not  at  all.  The 
fact  that  the  majority  have  not  done  so  only  shows  how  immensely  pow¬ 
erful  is  this  great  religious  instinct,  which  God  meant  should  be  Queen 
within  us. 

Let  me  do  no  injustice.  I  admit  the  many  excellent  qualities  ascribed 
to  God  in  the  popular  theology  ;  but  remember  this,  that  as  much  as  the 
noblest  words  of  the  New  Testament  add  to  the  conception  of  God  in  the 
worst  parts  of  the  Old  Testament,  just  so  much  also  do  the  savage  notions 
from  Genesis,  Exodus,  Leviticus,  Numbers,  and  Deuteronomy,  from  the 
baser  Psalms,  and  the  Prophets,  take  away  from  the  Father  who  is  in 
Heaven,  the  Spirit  who  is  to  be  worshipped  in  spirit  and  in  truth !  In 
this  “  alligation  alternate  ”  one  chapter  of  the  Old  Testament  can  adulterate 
and  spoil  all  the  blessed  oracles  of  the  New.  Jesus  is  set  off  against  Joshua ; 
the  whole  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  many  a 
blessed  Parable,  is  nullified  by  a  scrap  from  some  ancient  Jew  who  thought 
God  was  a  consuming  fire  ! 


The  Form  of  Religion  demanded  of  men,  in  accordance  with  the 
ecclesiastical  conception  of  God,  certainly  has  many  good  things,  but  it  is 
not  natural  Piety  for  its  emotional  part,  the  aboriginal  love  of  God ;  nor 
natural  Theology  for  its  intellectual  part,  the  natural  Idea  of  God ;  nor 
natural  Morality  for  its  practical  part,  the  normal  use  of  every  human  fa¬ 
culty;  but  it  is  just  the  opposite' of  these;  it  has  a  sentiment  against 
nature,  thought  against  nature,  practice  against  nature.  In  place  of 


25 


Love  to  God,  with  trust  and  hope,  the  most  joyous  of  all  emotions 
possible  to  man,  it  puts  Fear  of  God,  with  doubt,  and  dread,  and  de¬ 
spair,  the  most  miserable  of  all  emotions ;  and  in  place  of  love  to  men, 
to  all  men,  according  as  they  need  and  we  are  able,  it  puts  love  only  for 
your  own  little  household  of  faith,  and  hate  for  all  who  cannot  accept 
your  opinions ;  for  out  of  the  ecclesiastical  conception  of  God  comes  not 
only  the  superstition  which  darkens  man’s  face,  clouds  his  mind,  obscures 
his  conscience,  and  brutalizes  his  heart,  but  also  the  persecution  which  red¬ 
dens  his  hand  with  a  brother’s  blood.  The  same  spirit  is  in  Boston  to-day 
that  in  the  middle  ages  was  in  Italy  and  Spain.  Why  does  not  it  burn  men 
now,  as  once  it  did  in  Italy,  in  Spain,  and  in  Oxford  ?  It  only  lacks  the 
power ;  the  wish  and  will  are  still  the  same.  It  lacks  the  axe  and  faggot, 
not  the  malignant  will  to  smite  and  burn.  Once  it  had  the  headsman  at 
its  command,  who  smote  and  silenced  men ;  now  it  can  only  pray,  not  kill. 

Such  being  the  Ecclesiastical  Conception  of  God,  such  the  Ecclesiastical 
Beligion,  I  do  not  wonder  it  has  so  small  good  influence  on  mankind.  Men 
of  science,  not  clerical,  turn  off  from  such  a  God,  and  such  a  form  of  reli¬ 
gion.  They  are  less  wise  and  less  happy  ;  their  science  is  the  more  imper¬ 
fect,  because  they  do  not  know  the  Infinite  God  of  the  Universe,  the 
Absolute  Religion.  With  reverence  for  a  great  mind,  do  I  turn  the  grand 
studious  pages  of  La  Place  and  Yon  Humboldt,  but  not  without  mourning 
the  absence  of  that  religious  knowledge  of  God,  and  that  intimate  trust  in 
Him,  which  else  would  have  planted  their  scientific  garden  with  still 
grander  beauty.  I  do  not  wonder  that  men  of  politics  turn  off  from  eccle¬ 
siastical  religion,  and  are  not  warned  from  wickedness  by  its  admonition, 
nor  guided  to  justice  and  philanthropy  by  its  counsels.  Look  at  the  pol¬ 
iticians  of  America,  England,  France,  all  Christendom,  and  can  you  show 
me  a  single  man  of  them  in  a  high  place  who  believes  in  the  ecclesiastical 
conception  of  God,  and  in  public  ever  dares  appeal  to  the  religious 
nature  of  man,  and  there  expect  to  find  justification  of  a  great  thought  or 
a  noble  plan  ?  No  !  when  such  politicians  evoke  the  religious  spirit,  it  is 
only  to  make  men  believe  that  it  is  a  religious  duty  to  obey  any  tyrant  who 
seeks  to  plunder  a  nation,  to  silence  the  Press  of  France,  to  crush  out  the 
life  from  prostrate  Italy  and  Spain,  to  send  Americans  kidnapping  in  Penn¬ 
sylvania  or  New  England.  The  great  men  of  science  have  broke  with  the 
ecclesiastical  notion  of  God ;  men  of  great  moral  sense  will  have  nothing  to 
do  with  a  Deity  so  unjust ;  while  the  affectional  and  religious  men,  whose 
“primal  virtues  shine  aloft  as  stars,”  whose  deeds  are  “charities  that 
heal,  and  soothe,  and  bless”  the  weary  sons  of  men,  they  turn  off  with  dis¬ 
gust  from  the  ecclesiastical  God,  whose  chief  qualities  are  self-esteem,  van¬ 
ity,  and  destructiveness.  One  of  the  most  enlightened  writers  of  the  New 
Testament  says,  “  God  is  love.”  “  Yes,”  says  the  ecclesiastical  theologian, 
“but  he  is  also  a  consuming  fire;  he  gives  all  his  love  to  | the  Chris¬ 
tians  who  have  faith  in  Christ,  and  turns  all  his  wrath  against,  the  non- 


26 


Christians  who  have  no  faith  in  Christ.  He  that  believeth  and  is  baptized 
shall  he  saved ;  he  that  believeth  not  shall  be  damned.” 

If  a  man  accepts  this  notion  of  God,  he  can  never  be  certain  of  his  own 
welfare  hereafter ;  he  may  hope,  he  cannot  be  sure,  for  salvation  does  not 
depend  on  a  faithful  use  of  talents  or  opportunities ;  but  on  right  belief 
and  right  ritual.  And  when  neither  the  intuitive  nor  the  reflective  facul¬ 
ties  afford  any  test,  who  knows  if  his  belief  is  right?  The  Jews  are  to  be 
rejected  for  their  faith  in  Moses  and  the  Prophets.  The  Fourth  Gospel 
makes  Jesus  say  that  all  before  him  “  were  thieves  and  robbers ;  ” — I  think 
he  never  said  it.  Paul  repudiated  Peter,  if  not  also  James  and  John; 
he  was  a  dissembler,  and  they  only  “  seemed  tb  be  somewhat ;  ”  while  the 
author  of  the  Book  of  Revelation  thrusts  Paul  out  of  heaven,  consigning 
him  to  the  synagogue  of  Satan.  How  if  Paul  and  Peter  and  James  and 
John  did  not  know  what  faith  in  Christ  meant,  and  could  not  agree  to  live 
in  the  same  Church,  and  sit  in  the  same  heaven,  can  you  and  I  be  sure  of 
admittance  there  ? 

While  the  ecclesiastical  conception  of  God  is  thus  inadequate  to  a 
thoughtful  man’s  religion,  we  are  yet  told  that'we  must  never  reform  this 
notion !  There  is  a  manifest  progress  in  the  conception  of  God  in  the 
Biblical  books ;  but  in  the  Christian  Church  we  are  told  that  there  must 
#be  no  further  step;  we  must  stop  with  Joshua.  “  Fear  hath  torment,” 
says  that  anonymous,  deep-hearted  religious  writer  of  the  Hew  Testament, 
seventeen  hundred  years  ago;  but  “  perfect  love  casts  out  fear.”  We  are 
told  we  must  not  cast  it  out,  but  must  have  a  notion  of  God,  which  we 
must  fear!  Shame  on  us!  Mankind  has  made  a  mistake.  We  took  a 
false  step  at  the  beginning.  The  dream  which  a  lialf-savage  Jew  had  of 
God  we  take  for  God’s  affidavit  of  his  own  character.  We  do  not  look 
on  the  World  of  Matter  and  Mind,  to  gather  thence  a  natural  idea  of  God, 
only  at  the  statements  of  certain  men  who  wrote  seventeen  hundred  or 
three  thousand  years  ago,  men  who  did  well  enough  for  their  time,  not 
ours.  ' 

All  round  us  lie  the  evidences  against  the  ecclesiastical  conception  of 
God,  within  us  are  they  yet  more  distinct.  The  great  mistake  of  the 
Christian  Church  is  its  conception  of  God.  Once  it  was  the  best  the 
nations  could  either  form  or  accept.  To-day  it  is  not  worth  while  to  try 
to  receive  it.  It  is  inadequate  for  Science,  either  the  philosophy  of 
matter  or  man,  explaining  neither  the  condition,  the  history,  nor  yet  the 
origin  of  one  or  the  other.  It  is  unfit  for  Religion  ;  for  Piety,  its  senti¬ 
mental  part — Theology,  its  intellectual  part — Morality,  its  practical  part. 
I  cannot  love  an  imperfect  God,  I  cannot  serve  an  imperfect  God  with 
perfect  morality. 

There  will  be  no  great  and  sufficient  revival  of  religion  till  this  concep¬ 
tion  be  corrected.  Atheism  is  no  relief ;  indifference  cannot  afford  any 
comfort ;  and  belief  makes  the  matter  worse.  The  Churches  complain  of 
the  atheism  of  Science ;  their  false  notion  of  God  made  it  atheistic.  You 


27 


and  I  mourn  at  the  wickedness  of  men  in  power ;  is  there  any  thing  in  the 
ecclesiastical  religion  to  scare  a  tyrant  or  a  traitor  ?  In  high  American 
office  mean  men  live  low  and  wicked  lives,  abusing  the  people’s  trust, 
and  then  at  last,  when  the  instincts  of  lust,  of  passion,  and  of  ambition  fail 
them,  they  whine  out  a  few  penitent  words  to  a  priest,  on  their  death 
beds,  with  their  last  breath  making  investment  for  their  future  reputation 
on  earth,  and  also  in  the  Christian  Church!  For  this  mouthful  of  wind 
do  they  pass  for  better  Christians  than  a  whole  life  of  eighty  years  of 
philanthropy  gave  Franklin  the  reputation  for.  Thus  selfish  and  deceitful 
men  are  counted  for  saints  by  the  Christian  clergy,  while  the  magnificent 
integrity  of  Franklin  and  Washington  never  gave  them  a  high  place  in 
any  Christian  Church !  You  weep  at  the  poverty  of  life  in  the  American 
Church — thirty  thousand  ministers  with  right  of  visitation  and  search  on 
all  mankind,  and  no  more  to  show  for  it!  A  revival  of  religion  going  on 
over  the  whole  land — and  a  revival  of  the  slave  trade  at  the  same  time, 
and  neither  hindering  the  other!  You  mourn  at  the  poverty  of  life  in  the 
Churches  of  America,  but  the  Church  of  Christendom  is  no  better — nay, 
I  think  the  Church  in  the  Free  States  of  America  is  its  better  part;  the 
Christian  Church  abroad  strikes  hands  with  every  tyrant,  it  treads  down 
mankind,  nor  will  it  be  ever  checked,  while  it  has  such  a  false  conception 
of  God. 

Under  us  is  the  Earth,  every  particle  of  it  immanent  with  God ;  over 
us  are  the  Heavens,  where  every  star  sparkles  with  Deity  ;  within  us  are  the 
Heavens  and  the  Earth  of  human  Consciousness,  a  grander  revelation  of 
Deity  in  yet  higher  form.  These  are  all  of  them  a  two-fold  testimony 
against  the  Ecclesiastical  Conception  of  God.  Hot  one  of  them  has  a 
whisper  of  testimony  in  favor  of  atheism;  all  are  crowded  with  evidence  of 
the  Infinite  God, — First  Good,  First  Perfect,  and  First  Fair,  Father  and 
Mother  to  you  and  me,  to  all  that  were,  that  are,  that  shall  be,  leading  us 
to  life  everlasting. 


28 


SERMON  III. 

THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  IDEA  OF  COD  AND  ITS  RELATION  TO  THE 
SCIENTIFIC  AND  RELIGIOUS  WANTS  OF  MANKIND  NOW. 

Perfect  love  casteth  out  fear. — 1  John  iv.  18. 

The  religions  element  is  so  strong  that  it  always  will  act  both  in  its  in¬ 
stinctive  and  its  reflective  form,  for  though  here  and  there  an  eccentric 
man  neglect  or  treat  it  with  scorn,  no  race  of  men  ever  does  so ;  nay, 
no  nation,  no  little  tribe,  no  considerable  company  of  men.  There  are  a 
thousand  devotees  who  give  up  all  to  the  religious  faculty  where  there  is 
not  a  single  atheist  who  sacrifices  that  to  something  besides.  Like  the 
two  other  great  Primal  Instincts — the  hunger  for  bread,  which  keeps  the 
individual  alive,  and  the  hunger  for  posterity,  which  perpetuates  mankind — 
this  hunger  for  God  is  not  to  be  put  down.  Here  and  there  an  individual 
man  neglects  the  one  or  the  other,  the  instinct  of  food,  of  kind,  of  religion; 
but  the  human  race  nor  does,  nor  can.  In  Mankind  instinctive  nature  is 
stronger  than  capricious  will.  Whimsy  alters  the  cut  of  Ahab’s  beard,  or 
the  shape  of  Jezebel’s  ringlets ;  but  the  beard  itself  grows  on  Ahab’s  cheek 
and  chin,  will  he  or  nill  he,  and  Jezebel’s  head  is  herbaged  all  over  with 
curls,  growing  while  she  sleeps. 

Soon  as  Man  outgrows  the  wild  state  of  infancy,  where  he  first  ap¬ 
peared,  in  his  primitive  sense  of  dependence  he  has  always  felt  his  need 
of  God,  as  in  his  instinctive  perception  he  has  always  felt  the  Being  of 
God  reflected  therein,  and  formed  some  Notion  of  God,  better  or  worse. 
Go  where  you  will,  you  find  that  men  know  God.  The  notions  they  form 
of  him  vary  from  land  to  land,  from  age  to  age.  They  are  the  test  of  the 
people’s  civilization ;  how  rude  with  the  savage  !  how  comprehensive  with 
the  enlightened,  thoughtful,  religious  man!  But  no  nation  is  without 
them,  or  without  a  sense  of  obligation  towards  God  or  the  practice  of  some 
form  of  service  of  him. 

The  notion  men  form  of  God,  and  the  corresponding  service  they  pay, 
are  both  proportionate  to  the  people’s  civilization.  The  Indian  Massasoit’s 
conception  of  God,  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  fitted  him  as  well  as 
ours  fits  us.  Let  us  never  forget  this,  nor  think  that  we  are  proportion¬ 
ately  more  favored  than  our  fathers  were.  Little  baby  Jimmy  in  Penn¬ 
sylvania,  some  seventy  years  ago,  was  as  much  pleased  with  a  penny 
trumpet,  which  worried  his  aunts  and  uncles,  as  President  Buchanan  now 
is  with  the  Presidency  of  the  United  States  and  power  to  scare  all  Dem¬ 
ocrats  into  obedience.  To  us  our  fathers  in  858  are  barbarians,  and  we 
wonder  how  they  stood  it  in  the  world,  so  poorly  furnished  and  provisioned 


29 


as  they  were.  You  will  be  barbarians  to  your  sons  and  daughters  in 
2858,  and  they  will  wonder  how  you  continued  to  live  and  have  a  good 
time  of  it.  Yet  you  and  I  think  life  is  decent  and  worth  having.  Milk 
and  a  cradle  are  as  good  for  babies  as  meat  and  railroad  engines  for  men. 
Small  things  suit  little  folks.  So  is  it  in  religion  as  all  else  besides.  I  love 
to  read  the  religious  stories  of  rude  nations — the  Hebrews,  the  Philistines, 
the  New  England  Indians.  The  Iroquois  thought  there  were  three  Spirits, 
the  Spirit  of  Beans,  of  Squashes,  and  of  Indian  Corn,  and  these  made  an 
Agricultural  Trinity,  three  beneficent  persons'  in  one  rude  conception  of  a 
Mohawk  God.  Such  a  notion  served  their  souls  as  well  as  the  stone  toma¬ 
hawk  and  snow-shoe  their  hands  and  feet.  Let  us  never  forget  that  each 
age  is  as  sufficient  to  itself  as  any  other  age,  the  first  as  the  last.  The  im¬ 
mense  progress  between  the  two  is  also  the  law  of  God,  who  has  so  fur¬ 
nished  men  that  they  shall  find  satisfaction  for  their  wants,  when  they  are 
babies  of  savage  wildness  and  when  they  are  grown  men  of  civilization. 

From  the  beginning  of  human  history  there  has  been  a  continual  pro¬ 
gress  of  man’s  conception  of  God.  It  did  not  begin  with  Jacob,  Isaac  and 
Abraham  ;  it  will  not  end  with  you  and  me.  Yesterday  I  mentioned  some 
of  the  facts  of  this  progress  in  the  Bible,  and  pointed  out  the  Jehovah  of 
the  Pentateuch  eating  veal  with  Abraham  and  Sarah,  wrestling  with 
Jacob,  trying  to  kill  Moses  and  not  bringing  it  to  pass ;  I  showed  the 
odds  between  that  conception  of  God  and  “  Our  Father  who  art  in  hea¬ 
ven,”  which  filled  up  the  consciousness  of  Jesus,  and  the  God  who  is  Per¬ 
fect  Love,  which  abode  in  the  consciousness  of  another  great  man.  This 
progress  is  observable  in  all  other  people,  in  the  literature  of  every 
nation. 

Beligious  progress  cannot  be  wholly  prevented  ;  it  may  be  hindered  and 
kept  back  for  a  time.  This  is  the  mischief ; — men  form  an  ecclesiastical 
organization,  and  take  such  a  conception  of  God  as  satisfies  them  at  the  time, 
stereotype  it,  and  declare  all  men  shall  believe  that  forever.  They  say 
This  is  a  finality ;  there  shall  never  be  any  other  idea  of  God  but  this 
same,  no  progress  hereafter.”  Then  priests  are  made  in  the  image  of  that 
Deity,  and  they  misshape  whole  communities  of  men  and  women  ;  and  es¬ 
pecially  do  they  lay  their  plastic  hand  on  the  pliant  matter  of  the  child, 
and  inismould  him  into  deformed  and  unnatural  shapes.  What  an  absurd¬ 
ity  !  In  1780,  in  a  little  town  of  Connecticut,  Blacksmith  Beecher,  grim 
all  over  with  soot,  leather-aproned,  his  sleeves  rolled  above  his  elbows, 
with  great,  bare,  hairy  arms,  was  forging  axes  “  dull  as  a  hoe,”  and  hoes 
“  blunt  as  a  beetle,”  yet  the  best  that  men  had  in  Connecticut  in  those 
days.  What  if  the  Connecticut  lumberers  and  farmers  had  come  together, 
and  put  it  into  their  Saybrook  Platform,  that  to  the  end  of  time  all  men 
should  chop  with  Beecher’s  axes  and  dig  with  Beecher’s  hoes,  and  he  who 
took  an  imperfection  therefrom,  his  name  should  be  taken  from  the  Lamb’s 
Book  of  Life,  and  he  who  should  add  an  improvement  thereto,  the  seven 
last  plagues  should  be  added  unto  him !  We  all  see  the  absurdity  of  such 
a  thing.  In  1830,  in  Boston,  Minister  Beecher,  grim  with  Calvinism,  sur- 


30 


pliced  from  his  shoulders  to  his  feet,  Geneva-banded,  white-choked,  a 
stalwart  and  valiant-minded  son  of  the  old  blacksmith,  was  making  a 
theology — notions  of  Man,  of  God,  and  of  the  Relation  between  them.  His 
theological  forge  was  in  full  blast  in  Hanover  Street,  then  in  Bowdoin  Street, 
and  he  wrought  stoutly  thereat,  he  striking  while  his  parish  blew.  But 
his  opinions  were  no  more  a  finality  than  his  father’s  axes  and  hoes.  Let 
Blacksmith  Beecher,  grim  with  soot,  and  Minister  Beecher,  grim  with 
theology,  hammer  out  the  best  tools  they  can  make,  axes,  hoes,  doctrines, 
sermons,  and  thank  God  if  their  work  be  of  any  service  at  that  time ;  but 
let  neither  the  blacksmith  over  his  forge,  his  triphammer  going,  nor  the 
minister  over  his  pulpit,  his  Bible  getting  qftoted,  ever  say  .to  mankind, 
“  Stop,  gentlemen !  thus  far  and  no  farther !  I  am  the  end  of  human  history, 
the  last  milestone  on  the  Lord’s  highway  of  progress  ;  stop  here,  use  my 
weapon,  and  die  with  it  in  your  hand,  or  your  soul.”  Depend  upon  it, 
mankind  will  not  heed  such  men  ;  they  will  pass  them  by ;  whoso  ob¬ 
structs  the  path  will  be  trodden  down.  Progress  is  the  law  of  God. 

At  an  early  age  the  Christian  Church  accepted  the  Ecclesiastical  Method 
of  theology,  namely — that  every  word  between  the  lids  of  the  Bible  is 
given  by  God’s  miraculous  and  infallible  inspiration,  which  contains  the 
religious  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth,  and  to  get 
doctrines,  men  must  make  a  decoction  of  Bible,  and  only  of  Bible,  for  that 
is  the  unique  herb  out  of  which  wholesome  doctrines  can  be  brewed.  By 
that  method  it  formed  its  conception  of  God.  First,  it  fixed  the  Ethical 
Substance  of  God’s  character,  the  quality  of  God,  with  all  the  contradictions 
which  you  find  in  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New.  Next  it  fixed  the 
Arithmetical  Form  of  God’s  character,  the  quantitative  distribution  into 
three  persons,  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  alike  in  their  Godhead,  diverse 
in  their  function.  Thus  the  capability  to  produce  was  in  the  Father;  the 
capacity  of  being  produced  was  in  the  Son ;  the  capacity  of  being  pro¬ 
ceeded  from  was  in  the  Father  and  the  Son,  and  the  capability  of  proceed¬ 
ing  was  in  the  Holy  Ghost.  These  are  the  differentia  of  the  total  Godhe'ad. 
All  that  was  fixed  well-nigh  fifteen  hundred  years  ago. 

Since  that  time  there  have  been  three  great  movements  within  the 
Christian  Church.  First,  an  attempt  to  centralize  ecclesiastical  power  in 
the  Bishop  of  Rome  ;  that  was  the  Papal  movement.  Next  was  the  at¬ 
tempt  to  explain  the  ecclesiastical  doctrines  by  human  reason,  not  to  alter 
but  expound  and  demonstrate  by  intellect  what  was  accepted  by  faith  ; 
that  was  the  Scholastic  movement.  Then  came  at  last  the  attempt  to  de¬ 
centralize  ecclesiastical  power,  and  bring  back  from  the  Roman  Bishop  to 
the  common  people  what  he  had  filched  thence  away;  that  was  the -Prot¬ 
estant  movement.  It  split  the  Western  world  in  twain,  following  the 
ethnological  line  of  cleavage;  and  since  that  there  is  a  Roman  Church 
with  a  Pope,  and  a  Teutonic  Church  with  a  People.  But  the  Papists  and 
their  opponents  the  Laists,  the  Scholastics  and  their  enemies  the  Dog¬ 
matists,  the  Protestants  and  Catholics,  all  accepted  the  Ecclesiastical 


31 


Melhod  of  theology,  and  so  the  Ecclesiastical  Notion  of  God.  So  within 
the  borders  of  the  Christian  Church,  from  the  Council  at  Nice  in  325  to 
the  Council  at  North  Woburn  in  1857,  there  has  been  no  revision  of  the 
Conception  of  God,  no  improvement  thereof.  Protestant  and  Catholic, 
Scholastic  and  Dogmatist,  Laist  and  Papist,  agree  in  the  ethical  subtances 
of  God  and  in  the  arithmetical  form.  The  Athanasian  creed  set  forth 
both;  in  the  fourth  century  it  was  appointed  to  be  read  in  the  churches. 
What  is  called  the  “Apostles’  Creed”  has  little  apostolic  in  it  save 
its  name ;  yet  it  has  been  held  orthodox  for  sixteen  hundred  and  fifty 
years.  All  this  time  there  has  been  no  progress  in  the  ecclesiastical  con¬ 
ception  of  God,  as  set  forth  in  the  great  sects  of  the  Christian  Church  ;  the 
same  creed  which  answered  for  the  third  century  suffices  the  Church  to¬ 
day.  So  long  as  the  Church  holds  to  this  ecclesiastical  method  of  theology 
there  can  be  no  progress  in  the  notion  of  God,  for  only  Biblical  plants  may 
be  put  into  the  ecclesiastical  caldron,  and  from  them  all  only  that  concep¬ 
tion  can  be  distilled,  though  it  may  be  flavored  a  little,  diversely  here  and 
there,  to  suit  the  taste  of  special  persons. 

But  shall  Mankind  stop  ?  We  cannot  if  we  would.  We  can  stereotype 
a  creed  and  hire  men  to  read  it,  or  scare,  or  coax  them  ;  but  a  new  Truth 
from  God  shines  straight  down  through  creed  and  congregation,  as  that 
sunlight  through  the  sky.  In  the  last  four  hundred  years  what  a  mighty 
development  has  there  been  of  human  knowledge !  In  three  hundred  and 
sixty  years  the  geographic  world  has  doubled;  and  what  a  development 
in  astronomy,  chemistry,  botany,  zoology ;  in  mathematics,  metaphysics, 
ethics,  history !  Hqw  comprehensive  is  science  now !  But  there  has 
been  no  development  in  the  Church’s  conception  of  God.  The  ecclesias¬ 
tical  God  knows  nothing  of  modern  science — chemistry,  geology,  astron¬ 
omy  ;  even  the  geographic  extent  of  the  earth  is  foreign  thereto  ;  neither 
Jehovah  nor  the  ecclesiastical  Trinity  ever  heard  of  Australia,  of  the 
Friendly  Islands,  nor  even  of  the  Continent  of  America.  The  ecclesiastical 
conception  of  God  was  formed  before  the  discovery  of  America,  before 
modern  science  was  possible.  The  two  are  not  to  be  reconciled.  Which 
shall  yield,  the  Fact  of  Science,  or  the  Fiction  of  Theology? 

Outside  of  the  orthodox  Christian  Church  there  has  been  a  great  de¬ 
velopment  of  the  conception  of  God,  a  revision  of  it  more  or  less  complete, 
certainly  a  great  improvement.  Thus  the  Unitarians  rejected  the  Trinita¬ 
rian  arithmetic,  and  said,  “  God  is  one  nature  in  one  person.”  The  Univer- 
salists  rejected  the  devilish  element  and  said,  “  God  is  love  all  over,  and 
is  not  hate  anywhere.”  Once  it  seemed  as  if  these  two  sects  would  make 
a  revolution  in  the  Church’s  notion  of  God:  but  alas  !  the  Unitarians  and 
Universalists  both  accept  the  ecclesiastical  method  of  theology,  and  when 
they  appeal  to  the  miraculous  and  infallible  Bible  in  support  of  their  more 
reasonable  and  religious  notion  of  God,  they  are  always  beaten  in  that 
court  where  Genesis  is  of  as  much  value  as  the  four  Gospels,  and  murder¬ 
ous  Joshua  as  great  a  theological  authority  as  beneficent  Jesus.  So  when 
they  rely  on  the  Bible,  these  sects  are  defeated,  and  draw  back  toward  the 


32 


old  Church  with  its  belief  of  a  ferocious  Deity  ;  this  explains  the  condition 
and  character  of  these  two  valuable  sects..  Accordingly,  little  good  has  come 
from  their  movement,  once  so  hopeful.  They  would  change  Measures  and 
Doctrines,  but  they  would  not  alter  the  Principle  which  controls  the  mea¬ 
sure,  nor  the  Method  whereby  the  doctrines  are  made  ;  and  so  these  sects 
leaven  only  a  little  of  the  whole  lump ;  they  do  not  create  that  great  fer¬ 
mentation  which  is  necessary  to  make  the  whole  Church  take  a  new  form. 
How  much  depends  on  the  first  Principle,  and  the  right  Method ! 

How,  by  the  Philosophic  Method,  a  man  takes  the  Facts  of  instinctive  and 
reflective  Consciousness  within  him,  and  the  Facts  of  Observation  without, 
and  thence  forms  his  Idea  of  God.  He  will  be  helped  by  the  labors  of  such 
as  have  gone  before  him,  and  will  refuse  to  be  hindered  by  the  errors  of 
the  greatest  men.  He  will  take  the  good  things  about  God  in  this  blessed 
Bible,  because  they  are  good,  but  not  a  single  ill  thing  will  he  take  be¬ 
cause  it  is  in  the  Bible.  “  God  is  love,”  says  a  writer  in  the  Hew  Testament, 
and  our  thoughtful  man  will  accept  that ;  but  he  will  not  feel  obliged  to 
accept  that  other  statement,  in  the  Old  Testament,  that  “  God  is  a  con¬ 
suming  fire;  ”  or  yet  a  kindred  one  in  the  Hew  Testament,  “  These  shall 
go  away  into  everlasting  punishment,”  “  prepared  for  the  devil  and  his 
angels.”  He  will  understand  and  believe  that  “  He  that  loveth  is  born  of 
God,  and  knoweth  God ;  ”  but  he  will  not  assent  to  this,  which  the  Christian 
Church  teaches,  “  He  that  believeth  and  is  baptized  shall  be  saved,  but 
he  that  believeth  not  shall  be  damned.”  Because  he  accepts  the 
good  and  true  of  the  Bible,  he  will  not  fall  down  and  accept  the  false 
and  ill ;  for  the  ultimate  standard  of  appeal  will  not  be  to  a  Book  writ 
with  pens,  as  a  minister  interprets  it,  but  to  the  Facts  of  the  Universe,  as 
the  human  mind  interprets  them. 

In  philosophic  men  the  reflective  element  prevails ;  but  I  do  not  think 
the}7,  often  have  much  intuitive  power  to  perceive  religious  truths  directly, 
by  the  primal  human  instinct ;  nor  do  I  think  that  they  in  the  wisest  way 
observe  the  innermost  activities  of  the  human  soul.  Poets  like  Shakespeare 
observe  the  play  of  human  passion  and  ambition  better  than  metaphysi¬ 
cians  like  Berkeley  and  Hume,  better  than  moralists  like  *Butler  and  Paley. 
Commonly,  I  think,  men  and  women  of  simple  religious  feeling  furnish 
the  facts  which  men  of  great  thoughtful  genius  work  up  into  philosophic 
theology.  It  is  but  rarely  that  any  man  has  a  genius  for  instinctive  in¬ 
tuition,  and  also  for  philosophic  generalization  therefrom.  Such  a  man, 
when  he  comes,  fills  the  whole  sky,  from  the  nadir  of  special  primitive 
religious  emotion  up  to  the  zenith  of  universal  philosophic  thought.  You 
and  I  need  not  wait  for  such  men,  but  thankfully  take  the  Truth,  part  by 
part,  here  a  little  and  there  a  little,  and  accept  the  service  of  whoso  can 
help,  but  taking  no  man  for  master — neither  Calvin,  nor  Luther,  nor  Paul, 
nor  John,  nor  Moses,  nor  Jesus — open  our  soul  to  the  Infinite  God,  who 
is  sure  to  come  in  without  bell,  book,  or  candle. 


33 


When  a  man  pursues  this  natural,  philosophic  method  of  theology,  takes 
his  facts  from  consciousness  in  his  own  world,  and  observation  in  the 
world  of  matter,  then  he  arrives  at  the  Philosophical  Idea  of  the  God  of 
Infinite  Perfection.  That  God  has  all  the  qualities  of  complete  and  per¬ 
fect  being;  He  has  Infinite  Power  to  do,  Infinite  Mind  to  know,  Infinite 
Conscience  to  will  the  right,  Infinite  Affection  to  love,  Infinite  Holiness  to 
be  faithful  to  his  affections,  conscience,  mind,  power.  He  has  Being  with¬ 
out  limitation,  Absolute  Being;  he  is  present  in  all  space,  at  all  times; 
everywhere  always,  as  much  as  sometimes  anywhere.  He  fills  all  spirit, 
not  less  than  all  matter,  yet  is  not  limited  by  either,  transcending  both, 
being  alike  the  materiality  of  matter,  and  the  spirituality  of  spirit — that 
is,  the  substantiality  which  is  the  ground  of  each,  and  which  surpasses 
and  comprehends  all.  He  is  Perfect  Cause  and  Perfect  Providence,  cre¬ 
ating  all  things  from  a  perfect  motive,  of  a  perfect  material,  for  a  perfect 
purpose,  and  as  a  perfect  means,  and  to  a  perfect  end.  So,  of  all  conceiv¬ 
able  worlds  he  makes  the  best  possible,  of  all  conceivable  degrees  of  wel¬ 
fare  he  provides  the  best  in  kind  and  the  greatest  in  bulk,  not  only  for  all 
as  a  whole,  but  for  each  as  an  individual,  for  Jesus  of  Hazareth  who  is 
faithful,  for  Judas  Iscariot  who  turns  traitor.  There  is  no  Absolute  Evil 
in  the  world,  either  for  the  whole  as  all,  nor  for  any  one  as  part. 

That  is  the  Philosophic  Idea  of  God  and  of  his  relation  to  the  Universe. 
To-day  I  state  it  short,  for  I  have  dwelt  on  it  often  before,  and  perhaps  at 
some  other  time  I  shall  take  up  the  idea  part  by  part,  and  speak  of  God  as 
Infinite  Power,  then  as  Infinite  Wisdom,  then  as  Infinite  Justice,  as  Infi¬ 
nite  Love,  Infinite  Integrity,  and  so  on. 

I  think  this  Idea  of  God  as  Infinite  Perfection,  Perfect  Power,  Wisdom, 
Justice,  Love,  Holiness,  is  the  grandest  thought  which  has  ever  come  into 
mortal  mind.  It  is  the  highest  result  of  human  civilization.  Let  no  man 
claim  it  as  his  original  thought ;  it  is  the  result  of  all  mankind’s  religious 
experience.  It  lay  latent  in  human  nature  once,  a  mere  instinctive  reli¬ 
gious  feeling.  At  length  it  becomes  a  bright  particular  thought  in  some 
j*reat  mind ;  and  one  day  will  be  the  universal  thought  in  all  minds,  and 
will  displace  all  other  notions  of  God — Hindoo,  Egyptian,  Hebrew,  Classic, 
Christian,  Mohammedan,  just  as  the  true  theory  of  astronomy,  which  act¬ 
ually  explains  the  stars,  displaced  the  Ptolemaic  and  all  the  other  theories 
whhic  were  only  approximate ;  just  as  the  iron  axe  displaced  the  toma¬ 
hawk  of  stone. 

The  Evidence  of  this  God  is  in  man’s  Consciousness  and  in  the  World  of 
Matter  likewise  outside  of  him.  When  the  idea  is  presented  to  a  thought¬ 
ful  man,  he  at  once  says,  “  Yes,  God  is  Infinite  Perfection,  Power,  Wis¬ 
dom,  Justice,  Holiness,  Love,”  for  human  nature  is  too  strong  for  his  the- 
ologic  prejudice.  To  prove  there  is 'such  a  being  as  Jehovah,  who  met 
Moses  in  a  tavern  between  Midian  and  Egypt  some  thirty-three  hundred 
,  years  ago,  and  vainly  tried  to  kill  him,  you  must  know  Hebrew,  and  un¬ 
derstand  the  antiquities  of  the  Jews,  know  who  wrote  the  Book  of  Exo¬ 
dus,  where  he  got  his  facts,  what  he  meant  by  his  words,  what  authority 
3 


34 


he  rested  on;  and  when  you  have  made  that  investigation,  the  story  will 
turn  out  to  be  wind,  and  none  the  better  because  Hebrew  wind  thirty- 
three  hundred  years  old  ;  and  after  all  that,  you  do  not  come  to  a  fact 
of  the  Universe,  but  only  the  fiction  of  a  story-teller.  But  to  prove  the 
Infinite  Perfection  of  God,  you  have  the  facts  in  your  own  nature; 
you  are  to  sit  down  beside  that  primeval  well  and  draw  for  yourself, 
and  drinking  thence,  you  shall  thirst  no  longer  for  heathen  Abana  and 
Pharpar,  the  rivers  of  Gentile  Damascus,  nor  for  the  Hebrew  Jordan 
itself,  for  you  shall  find  there  is  a  well  of  living  water  within  you,  spring¬ 
ing  up  to  everlasting  life  ;  and  as  you  drink,  the  scales  of  theologic  leprosy 
fall  off  from  your  eyes,  and  you  stand  there  a  clean  man,  full  of  the  primi¬ 
tive,  aboriginal  vigor  of  Humanity.  As  you  look  down  into  that  depth  of 
consciousness  do  you  behold  the  eternal  and  immutable  Idea  of  the  Infi¬ 
nitely  Perfect  God  forever  mirrored  there.  This  depends  on  no  subjective 
peculiarities  of  the  individual,  but  on  the  objective  forces  of  the  Universe. 
So,  by  its  name  to  distinguish  it  from  all  other  notions  of  God,  I  will  call 
this  the  Philosophical  or  Natural  Idea  of  God ;  it  seems  to  me  a  fact  given 
in  Humanity  itself,  a  self-evident  truth  of  spiritual  consciousness,  some¬ 
thing  we  discover  in  the  Universe,  not  something  we  invent  and  project 
thereon.  So,  while  I  name  the  others  Conceptions  of  God,  I  call  this  the 
Idea  of  God — the  Philosophical  Idea,  because  derived  by  that  Method — 
the  Natural,  because  it  corresponds  to  Nature.  To  this  men  will  also  add 
conceptions  of  their  own  invention,  which  partake  of  the  subjective  pecu¬ 
liarity  of  John  or  Jane. 


I.  This  Idea  of  God  is  adequate  to  the  Purposes  of  Science.  First  of 
all  things  the  philosopher  wants  an  Adequate  Cause  for  the  Facts  of  the 
Universe,  both  the  World  of  Matter  out  of  him,  and  the  World  of  Spirit  in 
him.  He  is  to  explain  facts  by  showing  their  mode  of  operation,  and 
tracing  them  back  to  the  cause — to  the  proximate  cause  first,  to  the  ulti¬ 
mate  cause  at  last.  Now,  as  I  showed  before,  the  Ecclesiastical  Conception 
of  God  furnishes  no  adequate  cause  for  the  Facts  of  the  Universe.  To  the 
theologian  it  is  cause  sufficient  for  Noah’s  flood,  for  the  ark,  for  the  down¬ 
fall  of  Jericho  when  the  rams’-horns  blew,  for  the  standiug  still  of  the  sun 
and  moon  while  a  Hebrew  army  slew  their  victims ; — it  explains  such 
things  as  are  not  authenticated  facts  of  history,  but  only  anonymous  fic¬ 
tions  of  mythology.  It  is  no  adequate  cause  for  the  earth  under  our  feet, 
for  the  heavens  over  our  head,  and,  least  of  all,  for  this  earth  and  heaven 
of  human  consciousness  within  us.  The  ecclesiastical  God  is  sufficient 
cause  for  the  Westminster  Catechism,  for  baptism,  by  sprinkling  or  plunging, 
for  belief  in  eternal  damnation,  for  admission  to  Dr.  Banbaby’s  Church — 
but  it  does  not  explain  a  mother’s  love  for  her  wicked,  profligate  girl ;  nor 
David’s  wailing  over  his  worthless,  handsome  boy  :  uO  Absalom,  my  son ! 
my  son  Absalom  !  would  God  that  I  had  died  for  thee !” — there  is  no  fact  in 
the  ecclesiastical  God’s  consciousness  which  corresponds  to  that.  It  is  not 


35 


cause  for  such  a  man  as  Socrates,  or  Franklin,  nor  such  women  as  Miss 
Dix  and  Miss  Nightingale,  and  others  not  less  noble,  only  less  known.  It 
explains  Pharaoh’s  dream  about  fat  and  leankine;  the  story  of  Elisha’s 
cursing  the  children  who  cried  after  him,  “Go  up,  thou  bald  head,  go,” 
and  of  the  two  she-bears  out  of  the  woods  who  tore  two  and  forty  ot  those 
children  to  atoms  in  Divine  and  bearish  wrath — but  it  does  not  explain 
the  life  of  such  a  man  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  nor  his  lament,  “  0  Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem !”  It  does  not  account  for  that  grandest  of  human  triumphs, 

“  Father,  forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do.”'  To  explain 
such  characters  the  ecclesiastical  conception  of  God  is  no  more  adequate 
cause  than  the  penny-trumpet  in  a  little  boy’s'  mouth  is  sufficient  to  ex¬ 
plain  the  world  of  music  which  Beethoven  dreamed  into  thought  and  then 
poured  forth,  gladdening  the  earth  with  such  sweet  melody.  Read  the 
Book  of  Genesis,  then  read  Newton’s  Principia,  Humboldt’s  Kosmos,  nay, 
any  college  manual  of  chemistry,  and  ask  if  the  theologic  God  is  cause 
adequate  to  the  chemic  composition  of  a  single  flower !  Nay,  read  the 
stories  in  Genesis,  or  the  sermons  in  Jonathan  Edwards,  and  then  in  some 
starry  night  look  up  to  the  sky,  and  ask  if  that  form  of  Deity  could  have 
conceived  the  heavens  ?  You  see  at  once  how  insufficient  it  is. 

But  the  God  of  Infinite  Perfection  is  Adequate  Cause  for  all  the  facts 
in  the  Universe.  In  the  world  of  matter  you  find  Power  resident  on  the 
spot ;  Mind  resident  on  the  spot,  a  Plan  everywhere,  things  working  to¬ 
gether  in  order.  The  world  of  matter  is  a  “  team  of  little  atomies,”  thing 
yoked  to  thing,  and  skilfully  are  they  drove  afield  by  that  Almighty  One 
whose  thoughtful  road  is  everywhere.  All  is  orderly — never  a  break  in 
the  line  of  continuity.  In  the  fossil  animals  which  perished  a  million  of 
years  ago  you  find  proximate  formations  which  point  to  man;  nay,  }et 
further  back  in  the  structure  of  the  earth,  the  fashion  of  the  solar  system 
itself,  do  we  find  finger-posts  which  indicate  the  road  to  humanity — dis-, 
tinctly  pointing  unto  man.  There  is  Law  always,  a  constant  mode  of  ope¬ 
ration,  never  a  miracle  ;  no  chemist,  geologist,  astronomer,  can  show  proof 
of  the  “  intervention  of  God,”  but  the  Power,  Mind,  Law,  constant  mode 
of  operation,  these  show  the  presence  of  God  always,  everywhere,  ordering 
all  things  “  by  number  and  measure  and  weight.”  The  chemist  analyzes 
matter  into  some  sixty  primitive  substances,  oxygen,  hydrogen,  nitrogen, 
carbon,  and  the  rest ;  but  of  all  that  “  team  of  atomies  ”  not  a  single  brute 
creature  ever  thinks  a  thought ;  it  is  in  God  that  the  Mind  resides,  in 
him  is  the  Power  and  the  Plan.  Mr.  Whewell,  a  theological  man  indeed, 
but  yet  also,  I  think,  certainly  one  of  the  ablest  and  most  dispassionate 
men  of  science  in  these  days,  writes  a  book  against  the  Plurality  of  Worlds, 
and  declares  there  is  no  conscious  life  analogous  to  man’s  in  any  planet,  in 
sun,  or  moon,  or  star :  it  is  a  dead  world  up  there  ;  the  sun  is  a  dead  sun, 
the  moon  is  dead  as  brass,  and  there  is  no  life  in  any  star.  Why  so?  It 
is  not  consistent  with  the  Ecclesiastical  Notion  of  God ;  the  Book  of  Mira¬ 
culous  Revelation  never  gives  us  a  hint  of  a  living  thing  in  sun  or  moon 
or  star  ;  the  Plan  of  Atonement  applies  only  to  the  earth,  it  cannot  reach 


36 


an  inch  beyond  the  atmosphere,  which  extends  about  fifty-two  miles  from 
the  surface !  Mr.  Whewell  is  right — a  plurality  of  worlds  is  wholly  in¬ 
consistent  with  the  ecclesiastical  God;  there  is  no  record  that  such  a 
thought  ever  crossed  the  mind  of  Moses,  Jesus,  Paul  or  John,  that  it  ever 
occurred  to  Hebrew  Jehovah  or  Christian  Trinity.  But  it  is  not  incon¬ 
sistent  with  the  Infinite  God,  and  the  philosopher  who  believes  in  him  will 
not  correct  the  facts  of  Nature  by  the  fictions  of  Genesis.  To  him,  how 
different  the  World  of  Matter  appears,  one  grand  act  of  creative  power, 
which  is  everywhere  active  at  all  times. 

Then  when  this  Idea  is  accepted  no  philosopher  will  be  bid  to  look  for 
a  miracle,  and  called  an  “  infidel  ”  because  he  finds  only  Law — law  in 
the  botanic  growth  of  plants,  law  in  the  chemic  composition  of  minerals, 
law  in  the  mechanic  structure  of  the  earth,  the  sun,  the  solar  system,  the 
Universe  itself.  Then  there  will  be  no  atheistic  Lagranges  and  La  Places 
to  deny  all  God,  because  they  do  not  find  the  phantom  which  theolo¬ 
gians  bid  them  seek,  and  because  their  telescope  bores  through  the  spot 
where  the  New  Jerusalem  was  said  to  be,  and  finds  but  blank  celes¬ 
tial  space !  From  the  scheme  of  matter  and  of  mind  no  brilliant  Schelling, 
no  cautious,  erudite  Yon  Buch,  no  comprehensive,  magnificent,  generous, 
and  thousand-minded  Yon  Humboldt  shall  ever  omit  the  Cause  and  Provi¬ 
dence  of  matter  and  of  mind ! 

Then,  too,  how  different  will  the  great  complex  world  of  Human  His¬ 
tory  appear  !  Men  will  study  it  without  hindrance,  asking  only  for  facts, 
for  the  law  of  the  facts,  and  the  human  meaning  of  the  law.  They  will 
find  no  miracle  in  man’s  religious  history,  but  a  continual  development  of 
a  faculty  common  to  all  mankind,  a  gradual  progress  in  religious  feeling, 
religious  thought,  religious  act ;  no  savage  nation  without  consciousness 
of  God,  a  sense  of  dependence,  obligation,  gratitude — aye,  and  trust  in 
him,  and  something  of  love  for  him  “even  in  savage  bosoms” — all  this 
proportionate  to  the  people’s  civilization.  The  philosopher  will  find  God 
in  all  human  history,  in  the  gradual  elevation  of  mankind  from  the  low 
state  of  the  wild  man,  to  higher  and  higher  types  of  excellence. 

Jehovah  is  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob ;  he  inspires  only 
Jews,  them  not  much.  He  hates  Esau,  and  butchers  the  Canaanites.  To 
the  Gentiles  he  is  not  a  loving  God,  but  a  hating  Devil.  The  ecclesiastical 
God  is  a  Redeemer  only  to  the  redeemed — a  handful  of  men,  rather  mean 
men  too,  I  fear,  most  of  them.  What  is  he  to  babies  dying  unbaptized  ? 
What  to  the  wicked  whom  death  cuts  down  in  their  unrepented  naugh¬ 
tiness  ?  He  is  not  God,  but  a  “  consuming  fire ;  ”  he  is  “  the  Devil  and  his 
angels  ”  to  such ;  not  the  God  of  love,  but  a  “  great  and  dreadful  God,” 
who  laughs  when  their  fear  cometh,  and  crushes  Sodom  and  Gomorrah 
under  his  fiery  hail ;  and,  all  bloody  with  battle,  tramples  populous  Idumea 
under  foot,  as  a  Bacchanalian  treads  the  wine-press  full  of  purple-blooded 
grapes ! 

With  the  philosophical  Idea,  there  is  a  God  for  all  nations,  for  all  men, 
inspiring  liberal  Greece  and  prudent  Rome  not  less  than  pious  Judea — a 


37 


God  for  babies  sprinkled,  and  for  babies  all  unsmooched  by  priestly  hands ; 
a  God  for  Jacob  and  Esau,  Jew  and  Gentile ;  a  God  to  whom  mankind  is 
dear,  Father  and  Mother  to  the  human  race  !  Then  you  can  explain  hu¬ 
man  history :  the  diverse  talents  of  Egyptian,  Hindoo,  Persian,  Hebrew, 
Greek,  Teuton,  Celt,  American,  these  are  various  gifts,  which  imply  no 
partial  love  on  the  part  of  him  who  makes  yon  oak  a  summer  green,  yon 
pine  a  winter  green.  You  find  the  Infinite  God  in  human  history,  as  in 
the  world  of  matter;  for  as  the  plan  of  material  combination,  mineral, 
vegetable,  animal,  did  not  reside  in  any  one  of  the  sixty  primitive  sub¬ 
stances,  nor  in  the  world  of  minerals,  plants,  animals,  but  in  God,  who  is 
the  thoughtful  substance  to  these  unthinking  forms — so  the  plan  of  human 
history  is  not  in  Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob;  it  is  not  in  the  whole  world  of 
men,  but  in  the  Infinite  God,  who  is  the  Providence  that  shapes  our  ends 
to  some  grand  purpose  which  we  know  not  of.  Thus  the  true  idea  of 
God  is  adequate  to  the  Purposes  of  Science  both  of  matter  and  man. 

II.  This  Idea  of  God  is  also  adequate  to  the  Purposes  of  Religion. 
For  that  I  want  not  merely  a  cause  sufficient  to  my  intellect,  but  much 
more.  I  want  a  God  I  can  trust  and  have  absolute  confidence  in,  so  that  I 
am  sure  of  him.  Now  the  savage  may  confide  in  a  God  of  blood,  a  partial 
God,  who  loves  Jacob  and  hates  Esau ;  an  inconstant  and  irregular  God, 
who  works  by  fits  and  starts,  who  is  absent  now  for  a  long  time,  and  then 
comes  in  with  miraculous  pomp,  signs,  and  wonders.  A  malignant  man 
may  be  content  for  a  moment  with  his  vengeful  Deity,  who  hates  the  wicked 
and  will  torment  them  forever  ;  but  soon  as  a  man  is  considerably  enlight¬ 
ened  in  his  mind,  conscience,  heart  and  soul,  soon  as  he  comprehends  the 
Power  that  is  everywhere  always,  active  and  acting  for  good,  then  that 
savage  deity  is  not  enough  for  him.  He  wants  not  only  infinite  Ability, — 
power  of  Force  to  do,  power  of  Mind  to  plan,  and  Will  to  execute,  but 
also  power  of  Conscience  to  will  right,  and  the  Infinite  power  of  Affec¬ 
tion  to  love  all  men  and  all  things,  using  this  energy  of  will,  mind, 
force,  for  the  welfare  of  each  man — nay,  of  every  mote  that  peoples  this 
little  leaf.  That  quality  is  not  in  the  ecclesiastical  God;  here  it  is  in 
the  true  God  of  earth  and  heaven  and  human  consciousness.  He  is 
perfect  creating  Cause,  making  all  things  of  the  best  possible  material, 
from  the  best  possible  motives,  for  the  best  possible  purpose,  and  as  the 
best  possible  means  to  achieve  that  purpose.  He  is  perfect  conserving 
Providence,  who  is  as  perfectly,  completely  and  essentially  present  in  this 
little  rosebud  which  I  hold  in  my  hand,  as  he  was  when^as  the  Biblical 
poet  has  it,  “  the  morning  stars  sang  together,  and  all  the  sons  of  God 
shouted  for  joy,”  at  the  creation  of  the  earth,  just  springing  into  new-born 
stellar  life.  He  administers  all  things  by  the  perfect  method,  with  the 
best  of  means,  and  will  secure  the  best  of  ends  for  you  and  me,  for  each 
man,  saint  and  sinner,  for  the  poor  widow  who  supplicates  and  the  unjust 
judge  who  fears  not  God,  neither  regards  man. 

By  the  ecclesiastical  notion  there  is  Absolute  Evil  in  God,  a  dark  deep 


38 


background,  out  of  which  comes  evil  in  the  nature  of  things ;  and  hence 
comes  the  total  depravity  of  man,  hence  the  wrath  of  God,  enlivening  for¬ 
ever  the  fire  of  hell,  which  no  deluge  of  human  tears  and  blood  can  ever 
quench.  So  the  Evil  in  the  world  is  eternal,  not  reconciled,  not  atoned  for ; 
it  cannot  be  removed,  neither  in  this  life  nor  that  to  come,  because  it  is  an 
essential  part  of  God.  Nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  men  out  of  a  thou¬ 
sand  are  sinners,  and  their  sin  is  eternal,  not  to  be  removed ;  so  their  agony 
has  no  end.  Trace  it  back  logically  to  its  ultimate  cause,  and  it  is  all 
God’s  fault.  So  every  sin  not  repented  of  that  you  and  I  commit,  is  not 
only  perpetual  wretchedness  for  us,  but  likewise  an  eternal  blot  on  the 
character  of  the  ecclesiastical  God.  Under  the  parlor  windows  of  his 
little  Heaven,  where  the  elect  loll  on  their  couches  and  look  out,  indolently 
touching  their  harps  of  gold,  there  lies  the  immeasurable  Sink  of  Hell, 
where  the  Devils,  those  unclean  beasts  of  the  infernal  world,  wallow  con¬ 
tinual,  rending  the  souls  of  men,  while  the  reek  of  their  agony  ascends  up 
forever  and  ever ! 

But  by  the  true  and  philosophic  or  natural  Idea  of  God,  all  the  Evil  of 
the  world  is  something  incident  to  man’s  development,  and  no  more  per¬ 
manent  than  the  stumbling  of  a  child  who  learns  to  walk,  or  his  scrawling 
letters  when  he  first  essays  to  write.  It  will  be  outgrown,  and  not  a  par¬ 
ticle  of  it  or  its  consequences  shall  cleave  permanent  to  mankind.  This  is 
true  of  the  individual  wrongs  which  you  and  I  commit ;  and  likewise  of 
such  vast  wickedness  as  war,  political  oppression,  and  the  hypocrisy  of 
priesthoods.  These  are  blots  in  mankind’s  writing-book,  which  we  make 
in  learning  to  copy  out  God’s  Eternal  Rule  of  Right  in  fair  round  let¬ 
ters,  so  clear  that  he  may  read  who  runs.  The  very  pain  the  error  gives 
is  remedial,  not  revengeful ;  it  is  medicine  to  cure  and  save  and  bless,  not 
poison  to  kill  and  torture  with  eternal  smart.  Here  then  is  a  God  you  can 
trust — Power,  Wisdom,  Will,  Justice  also,  and  likewise  Love.  What  quality 
is  there  a  man  can  ask  for  that  is  not  in  the  Infinite,  Perfect  God  ? 

Then  there  will  be  a  Form  of  Religion  adapted  to  represent  such  an  idea 
of  God.  It  will  conform  to  Man’s  Nature,  his  body  and  soul,  doing  justice 
to  every  part,  for  as  God  made  man  with  such  faculties  as  would  best 
serve  his  own  great  end,  so  it  is  clear  that  ft  is  man’s  duty  to  use  these 
faculties  in  their  natural  way,  for  their  normal  purpose.  God  did  not 
make  man  with  something  redundant  to  be  cut  off,  or  lacking  something 
to  be  sought  elsewhere  and  tied  on ;  he  gave  us  such  faculties  as  are  fit  for 
our  work. 

1.  See  the  effect  this  idea  has  on  Piety.  A  natural  religious  instinct 
inclines  us  to  love  God.  If  we  have  an  Idea  of  him  which  suits  that  faculty, 
then  the  soul  loves  God  as  the  eye  loves  light,  the  ear  sound,  as  the  mind 
loves  truth,  use  and  beauty,  the  conscience  justice,  and  the  affections  men 
and  women.  The  hungry  religious  faculty  seeks  for  itself  bread,  finds  it,  and 
is  filled  with  strength  and  delight.  If  it  find  it  not,  then  we  are  tortured 
by  Fear,  that  ugly  raven  which  preys  on  the  dissatisfied  heart  of  man. 


Now  the  Infinite  God  is  the  object  of  entire  and  complete  satisfaction  to 
the  Soul.  You  want  perfect  power  for  your  reverence,  perfect  wisdom 
for  your  intellect,  perfect  justice  for  your  conscience,  perfect  love  for  your 
affections,  perfect  integrity  for  your  soul :  and  here  they  all  are  in  the  in¬ 
finitely  perfect  God.  So  piety  will  be  complete  in  all  its  parts,  and  perfect 
too  in  each.  I  cannot  love  a  Wicked  man  as  a  good  man,  nor  a  foolish  and 
unjust  man  as  one  wise  and  just;  no  more  can  I  love  a  foolish  God,  nor  an 
unjust  God,  nor  a  hating  God.  In  proportion  as  I  am  wise,  just,  humane, 
shall  I  hate  such  a  God,  and  repudiate  the  shameful  thought.  But  the 
perfect  God — I  cannot  help  loving  him  just  in  proportion  to  my  excellence. 
He  made  me  so.  I  put  it  to  the  consciousness  of  every  one  of  you,  is  it  not 
so  ?  When  God  is  thus  presented  as  infinitely  perfect,  can  you  refrain 
from  loving  him  with  your  intellect,  your  conscience,  heart  and  soul? 
No  more  than  the  healthy  eye  can  fail  to  enjoy  the  light ;  no  more  than 
the  hungry,  healthy  appetite  can  help  rejoicing  in  its  natural  food,  the 
maiden  in  her  lover,  or  the  bridegroom  in  his  bride! 

2.  Not  less  does  this  Idea  of  God  affect  Morality,  the  other  part  of 
religion.  I  find  certain  ideal  rules  of  conduct  writ  on  my  body  and  in 
my  spirit.  By  inward  and  outward  experience  gradually  I  learn  these 
rules — the  laws  of  God,  enacted  by  him  into  my  flesh  and  soul.  I  shall 
try  to  keep  these  laws ;  I  know  they  are  his  commandment.  I  sjiall  turn 
every  faculty  to  its  special  work.  My  general  piety,  the  love  of  God,  shall 
come  out  in  my  normal  daily  work,  in  temperance  and  chastity,  the  piety 
of  the  body  ;  in  knowledge  of  the  true,  the  useful,  the  beautiful,  the  piety 
of  the  intellect ;  in  justice  for  all  men,  the  piety  of  the  conscience;  in 
affection  for  all  in  their  various  relations  to  me,  in  love  for  my  friend,  kin¬ 
dred,  wife  and  child,  which  is  the  piety  of  the  heart ;  yes,  it  will  appear 
in  continual  trust,  in  absolute  reliance  on  the  Infinite  God,  which  is  the 
great  total  generic  piety  of  the  soul. 

Then  Religion  will  not  be  away  off,  one  side  of  my  life,  separate  from 
my  daily  duty  as  brother,  sister,  son,  father,  mother ;  not  apart  from  my 
work  as  blacksmith,  governor,  shoemaker,  minister,  nurse,  seamstress, 
baby-tender,  cook,  editor,  judge,  or  whatever  I  may  be ;  but  the  soul  of 
piety  will  make  religion  in  all  these  things.  It  will  not  be  an  exception 
in  my  life,  condensed  into  a  single  moment  of  morning  or  of  evening 
prayer ;  it  will  be  the  instance  of  my  life,  spread  as  daylight  over  all  my 
work. 


One  day  this  Idea  of  God  will  shine  in  human  consciousness,  and  all 
the  rude  conceptions  which  now  prevail  will  vanish  as  Moloch,  Baal,  Zeus, 
Jupiter,  Odin,  and  Thor  have  faded  out  from  the  religion  of  all  live  man¬ 
kind.  To-day  nobody  prays  to,  nor  swears  by  these  names,  whereunto  mil¬ 
lions  of  men  once  fell  prostrate  and  poured  out  such  sacrificial  blood.  One 
day  the  God  of  Infinite  Perfection  shall  be  felt  and  known  by  all  mankind ! 
Then  no  bigot,  ignorant  as  a  beast,  shall  essay  to  rebuke  thoughtful  men 


40 


where  he  knows  nothing  and  they  know  much.  No  longer  shall  priests — ill- 
born  to  little  talent,  ill-bred  to  superstition,  ignorance  and  bad  manners — 
thrust  their  anointed  stupidity  in  between  man  and  God ;  no  longer  shall 
fanaticism  pinch  the  forehead  of  the  people ;  no  longer  shall  it  mutilate 
the  fair  body  of  man,  nor  practise  yet  more  odious  emasculation  on  the 
soul.  Religion  shall  not  mildew  and  rot  the  fruit  of  manhood  ;  nor  blast 
the  bloom  of  youth ;  nor  nip  the  baby  bud :  but  the  strongest  force  in  our 
nature  shall  warm  and  electrify  the  whole  plant  of  humanity,  helping  the 
baby  bud  swell  into  youthful  bloom,  and  ripen  into  manly  fruit,  golden  and 
glorious  amid  the  sheltering  leaves  of  human  life.  To  youth,  religion  shall 
give  a  rosier  flush  of  healthy  joy  ;  to  maid  and  man  shall  it  bring  strength, 
more  stalwart  and  a  lovelier  beauty,  cheering  them  through  their  single 
or  their  married  toilsome  life  ;  and  it  shall  set  its  kingliest  diadem,  a  crown 
of  heavenly  stars,  on  the  experienced  brow  of  age. 

To-day  “all  Christendom  is  Christian.”  Why?  It  has  the  ecclesias¬ 
tical  method,  the  ecclesiastical  conception  of  God,  a  mode  of  salvation  by 
another  man’s  religion,  not  our  own.  Let  me  do  no  injustice.  It  has  the 
best  form  of  religion  the  world  has  devised  yet  on  any  large  scale,  which 
has  done  great  service  ;  but  in  all  Christendom  ecclesiastical  Christianity 
hinders  no  war,  it  breaks  no  tyrant’s  rod,  it  never  liberates  a  slave,  eman¬ 
cipates  no  woman,  shuts  up  no  drunkery,  removes  no  cause  of  ignorance, 
poverty,  or  crime,  cherishes  the  gallows ;  it  is  no  bar  to  the  politician’s 
ambition,  all  reckless  of  the  natural  rights  of  man ;  it  never  checks  a 
pope  or  priest  in  his  hypocrisy.  Every  monster  is  sure  to  have  this  eccle¬ 
siastical  form  of  religion  on  his  side,  and  when  Napoleon  or  President 
Buchanan  wishes  to  do  a  special  wicked  deed,  he  bends  his  public  knees 
and  supplicates  his  ecclesiastic  God,  the  name  in  which  all  evil  begins. 

But  the  true  Idea  of  God,  the  Religion  which  is  to  come  of  it,  which- is 
love  of  that  God  and  keeping  all  his  commandments,  will  work  such  a  rev¬ 
olution  in  man’s  affairs  as  Luther,  nor  Moses,  nor  yet  mightiest  Jesus 
ever  wrought.  God  everywhere,  Infinite  Wisdom,  Justice,  Love,  and  In¬ 
tegrity,  Religion  in  all  life,  over  the  anvil,  in  the  pulpit,  beside  the  cradle, 
on  the  throne — what  a  new  world  shall  that  make,  when  the  great  river 
of  God  runs  in  the  channel  he  made  for  it,  singing  melodies  as  it  runs, 
and  sending  the  spray  up  from  its  bosom  to  fertilize  whole  continents, 
which  shall  break  out  into  flowers,  that  ripen  into  fruit,  the  very  leaves  for 
the  healing  of  the  nations  ! 


41 


SERMON  IV. 


OF  THE  SOUL’S  NORMAL  DELIGHT  IN  THE  INFINITE  GOD. 

“  I  will  behold  thy  face  in  righteousness :  I  shall  be  satisfied,  when  I  awake,  with  thy  like¬ 
ness.” — Ps.  xvii.  15. 


If  a  man  be  sure  of  the  Infinite  Perfection  of  God,  the  natural  object 
of  desire  for  all  his  nobler  faculties,  what  tranquillity  and  delight  is  there  for 
him ;  not  spasmodic  and  violent,  but  equable  and  continuous !  Then  the 
strongest  of  all  the  human  powers  finds  what  most  of  all  it  needs ;  and  the 
highest,  the  greatest  of  all  human  delights  peoples  the  consciousness  with 
this  Holy  Family  of  Love.  I  do  not  wonder  that  all  men  are  not  rich — it 
is  not  possible  ;  nor  famous — that,  too,  is  beyond  the  reach  of  all  save  one 
in  a  million,  even  if  each  were  so  foolish  as  to  wish  he  had  a  great  name 
always  rattling  behind  him,  filling  his  ears  with  dust  and  silly  noise.  It  is 
not  to  be  supposed  that  all  men  will  pre-eminently  be  wise,  or  witty ;  nay, 
not  even  learned.  It  does  not  astonish  me  that  no  more  try  for  such 
things,  though  feeling  yet  their  charm.  But  I  am  amazed  that  any  one 
should  be  content  to  trudge  along  through  life  without  a  good  culture  of 
the  religious  faculty.  I  should  of  all  things  hate  to  be  poor  in  Piety  and 
Morality.  Above  all  things  I  would  know  God  and  live  in  tranquil  glad¬ 
someness  with  him. 

When  a  little  boy,  I  used  to  hear  ministers  preach  that  the  natural  man 
did  not  love  God  ;  but  I  was  sure  the  natural  Boy  did.  They  said  that 
Religion  was  something  man  naturally  turned  off  from  and  avoided,  and 
only  the  Holy  Ghost  could  catch  and  bring  him  painful  back.  I  con¬ 
fess  I  was  filled  with  wonder,  for  to  my  young  experience  it  seemed  as 
natural  for  a  man,  at  least  a  boy,  to  worship  God,  to  love  God,  to  trust  in 
him,  and  feel  a  delight  in  him,  as  it  was  for  my  father’s  bees  to  get  wax 
and  honey  from  the  yellow  blossoms  of  the  willow  or  the  elm — the  first 
flowers  of  the  late  Northern  Spring — or  to  revel  in  the  lilacs  which  hung 
over  the  bee-house,  or  rejoice  in  the  white  clover  of  New  England,  that, 
beautifying  the  fields  all  around,  wooed  those  little  bridegrooms  to  its 
fragrant  and  sweet  breast.  No  theological  education  and  gray-bearded 
experience  with  mankind  makes  me  now  wonder  less  when  I  hear  the  old 
calumny  repeated  for  the  thousandth  time. 

Look  all  the  world  over,  and  see  how  man  delights  in  God.  These 
roses  do  not  unveil  and  disclose  their  fair  bosoms  to  the  sun  more  naturally 
than  spontaneous  man  opens  his  soul  to  God  and  welcomes  the  great  Star, 
shedding  infinite  daylight  therein.  Men  with  fire  sacrificing  their  sons 
unto  Moloch,  or  Jehovah,  men  crushed  before  the  car  of  Juggernaut,  men 


42 


in  convents,  women  emaciated  to  nuns,  crowds  of  men  in  Philadelphia, 
New  York,  Berlin,  and  London,  thrilled  with  bristling  horror  at  the  ter¬ 
rible  phantom  which  some  bony  Calvinist  calls  out  of  his  dark  imagination 
to  scare  them  withal,  these  testify  of  the  necessity  man  feels  to'  turn  his 
face  towards  God ;  and  if  he  find  not  the  true,  then  will  he  fasten  on  some 
cheating  substitute.  If  there  be  no  God  that  he  can  love,  then  he  crouches 
down  beneath  the  conception  of  some  God  of  Damnation,  and  is  horrified 
with  fear.  The  Soul,  like  the  mouth,  goes  ever,  and  must  be  fed,  if  not  on 
what  it  would,  then  at  least  on  the  best  it  finds. 

Mankind  takes  great  delight  in  its  religious  consciousness.  With  what 
joy  did  Egypt  build  up  its  pyramids,  and  from  a  mountain  Brahmanic  In¬ 
dians  hew  their  rock-cut  temples  out !  The  wondrous  architecture  of  the 
Ionian  Greeks  in  many  a  marble  town,  the  fantastic  mosques  of  the  Mo- 
hammedaus,  the  arabesques  of  Moslem  piety,  the  amazing  churches  of  the 
mediaeval  Christians — all  these  were  built  with  solemn  joy  !  Not  without 
delight  did  laborious  men  express  the  nation’s  gloomy  religious  conscious¬ 
ness  in  these  things.  Phoenicians  worshipping  Melkartha,  Siamese  pros¬ 
trate  before  their  great  idol  of  a  silver  Buddha,  Nootka  Sound  Indians  alia 
rainy  day  sitting  on  the  eaves  of  their  god-house  and  drumming  with  the 
naked  feet,  Catholics  on  Easter  Sunday,  kneeling  by  thousands  before  St. 
Peter’s  that  the  Pope  may  say  “Peace  be  with  you !  ”  Protestants  crowding 
to  a  camp-meeting  or  a  revival — all  these  are  witnesses  to  this  great  re¬ 
ligious  instinct,  stronger  than  all  outward  force,  which  moves  them  toward 
the  Divine. 

I  think  my  own  life  has  not  been  lacking  in  happiness  of  a  high  charac¬ 
ter.  I  have  swam  in  clear  sweet  waters  all  my  days  ;  and  if  sometimes 
they  were  a  little  cold,  and  the  stream  ran  adverse  and  something  rough, 
it  was  never  too  strong  to  be  breasted  and  swam  through.  From  the  days 
of  earliest  boyhood,  when  I  went  “  stumbling  through  the  grass,”  “  as  merry 
as  a  May  bee,”  up  to  the  gray-bearded  manhood  of  this  time,  there  is  none 
but  has  left  me  honey  in  the  hive  of  memory,  that  I  now  feed  on  for  pres¬ 
ent  delight.  When  I  recall  the  years  of  boyhood,  youth,  early  manhood, 
I  am  filled  with  a  sense  of  sweetness,  and  wonder  that  such  little  things 
can  make  a  mortal  so  exceeding  rich !  But  I  must  confess  that  the 
chiefest  of  all  my  delights  is  still  the  religious.  This  is  the  lowest  down, 
the  inwardest  of  all — it  is  likewise  highest  up.  What  delight  have  I  in 
my  consciousness  of  God,  the  certainty  of  his  protection,  of  his  Infinite 
Love !  There  is  an  Infinite  Father — nay,  Infinite  Mother  is  the  dearer  and 
more  precious  name — who  takes  a  special  care  of  me,  and  has  made  this 
world,  with  its  vast  forces,  to  serve  and  bless  me,  an  Elias  chariot  on 
which  I  shall  ride  to  heaven — nay,  am  riding  that  way  all  the  time !  God 
loves  me  as  my  natural  mother  never  did,  nor  could,  nor  can  even  now 
with  the  added  beatitudes  of  well-nigh  two  score  years  in  heaven.  I  stand 
on  the  top  of  the  world — all  the  stars  shine  for  me.  But  he  loves  just  as 
well  the  little  boy,  black  as  my  coat,  born  this  hour  in  some  wigwam  of 
South  Africa,  and  will  take  just  as  special  care  thereof,  and  has  made  the 


43 


Universe  a  chariot  of  fire  to  translate  that  little  black  Elias  to  heaven  with¬ 
al  ;  he  also  stands  on  the  top  of  the  world  and  has  a  life-estate  in  the  sun 
and  moon  and  every  star.  Nay,  God  takes  just  as  good  care  of  the  mouse 
which  gnaws  the  grocer’s  cheese  to-day,  nor  never  for  a  moment  neglects 
the  little  aphis  now  sucking  this  leaf;  nor  the  parasitic  animalcule  which 
feeds  on  the  aphis,  the  atomy  of  an  atomy.  They  also  stand  on  the  top 
of  the  world,  this  great  Celestial  Sphere  whereof  God  is  both  centre  and 
circumference.  Consciousness  of  that  God,  the  Cause  and  Providence  of  all 
the  world,  it  fills  me  with  such  delight  as  all  the  world  besides  can  never 
give!  I  wonder  any  one  who  ever  opened  half  an  eye  inwardly,  could 
dream  that  Religion  is  unnatural  to  man,  that  Piety  is  not  welcome  to  our 
innermost  as  are  these  roses  welcome  to  the  Spring.  For  what  I  say  of 
me  is  also  true  of  you,  if  not  of  each,  why,  certainly,  of  most — ’tis  true  of 
Man,  if  not  of  men. 

In  great  Italian  towns,  all  winter  long,  you  shall  see  men  and  women, 
too  old,  perhaps,  for  work,  yet  not  quite  poor  enough  for  professional  beg¬ 
gary,  wrinkled  as  Egyptian  mummies  ;  they  crawl  out  of  their  hovels  and 
creep  through  the  cold  darkness  of  the  lanes  they  live  in,  and,  screened 
from  the  wind  under  the  wall  of  some  great  church,  palace,  or  monastery, 
they  nestle  all  day  in  the  yellow  sunshine  of  the  sky,  so  happy  in  that 
light  which  gives  them  also  necessary  warmth  do  those  venerable  babies 
seem,  blest  by  that  great  star  which  shines  forever  on  them,  though  six 
and  ninety  million  miles  away !  In  New  England  or  Pennsylvania,  when 
the  spring  thaws  out  the  farm-house,  and,  speck  by  speck,  the  dry  earth 
appears  green  with  healthy  grass,  and  the  fresh  smell  of  the  ground,  such 
as  you  find  it  at  no  other  time,  cotnes  up  a  wholesome  breath,  some  pale, 
little  tall  girl,  toddling  about  the  narrow  kitchen  all  winter  long,  looking 
thin  and  peaked,  comes  out  to  revel  in  the  sunshine  and  the  new  grass. 
The  breath  of  the  ground  is  the  inspiration  of  health  to  her ;  the  eye,  dim 
and  sunken  just  now,  ere  long  glows  like  the  morning  star  in  that  young 
heaven,  and  the  pale  cheek  has  the  bloom  of  the  ruddy  clover  in  it  too. 
By-and-bye,  the  mother,  careful  and  troubled  about  many  things,  tells  the 
neighbors  at  meeting  on  Sunday,  “  O,  Jinnie’s  quite  another  girl  now  the 
spring’s  come  from  what  she  was  in  February  and  March.  The  winter 
went  hard  with  her,  poor  thing ;  I  and  her  father  begun  to  think  she’d 
melt  away  before  the  snow  did !  I  think  she’ll  get  along  nicely  now !  ” 
What  the  sun  is  to  the  sickly  girl  whom  winter  pent  up  in  the  narrow 
house,  and  to  the  lazzaroni  at  Naples,  whose  poverty  allows  him  no  nearer 
fire  and  light,  that  is  the  Religious  Consciousness  to  you  and  me ;  yes,  to 
all  men  in  all  lands,  in  every  age  save  the  rudest  of  all. 

I  do  not  see  how  any  one  can  live  without  it ;  I  think  none  ever  does. 
As  the  body  on  the  material  world,  so  the  soul  must  live  on  God,  that  uni¬ 
versal  motherly  bosom  to  warm  and  feed  mankind.  All  over  the  world 
do  you  find  the  sweet  and  holy  flower  of  Piety  springing  out  of  the  ground 
of  humanity,  common  as  grass  on  the  earth,  or  stars  above  it.  Early 
literature  is  full  of  religion.  Man’s  first  psalm  is  of  God ;  so  little  babies 


44 


first  of  all  things  say  Mamma,  Papa.  Theology  is  the  oldest  of  all  science 
— this  queen  mother  of  many  knowledges.  Amid  all  the  babble  of  shrewd, 
noisy  tongues,  this  language  of  heaven,  spoken  in  a  still  small  voice,  is  yet 
understood  of  all  mankind.  Civilized  people  have  their  Bibles,  Chinese, 
Indian,  Persian,  Hebrew,  Christian,  Mohammedan,  writ  with  pens,  but 
yet  thought  inspired  of  God.  The  savage  also  has  his  Bible,  far  older, 
yet  not  writ  with  pens.  Mr.  Cartier,  who  went  among  the  North 
American  Indians  in  the  sixteenth  century,  says  :  “  A  day  seldom  passes 
with  an  elderly  Indian,  or  others  who  are  esteemed  wise  and  good,  in 
which  a  blessing  is  not  asked  or  thanks  returned  to  the  Giver  of  all  life, 
sometimes  audibly,  but  most  generally  in  the  devotional  language  of  the 
heart.”  Another  missionary  amongst  them  says,  when  the  Indian  party 
broke  up  their  winter  encampment,  they  went  to  the  spring  which  had 
furnished  them  water,  and  thanked  the  Great  Spirit  who  had  preserved 
them  in  health  and  safety,  and  supplied  their  wants.  “  You  then  witness 
the  silent  but  deeply  impressive  communion  which  the  unsophisticated 
native  of  the  forest  holds  with  his  Creator.” 

“  Every  human  heart  is  human, 

And  even  in  savage  bosoms 

There  are  longings,  yearnings,  strivings, 

For  the  good  they  comprehend  not; 

And  the  feeble  hands  and  helpless, 

Groping  blindly  in  the  darkness, 

Touch  God’s  right  hand  in  that  darkness, 

And  are  lifted  up  and  strengthened.” 

Do  not  think  that  God  knows  only  such  as  u  know  Christ,”  or  Moses. 
He  is  no  respecter  of  persons.  The  footsteps  of  religion,  you  see  them  in 
the  dew  of  the  world’s  early  morning ;  they  are  deeply  set  in  the  primeval 
rock  of  human  history.  How  multitudinous  are  the  conceptions  of  God, 
all  meant  to  satisfy  the  soul  which  longs  for  Him!  The  appetite  for  food, 
the  instinct  for  dress,  how  many  experiments  they  make !  Humanity  could 
not  dispense  with  one  of  them. 

“  The  lively  Grecian  in  a  land  of  hills, 

Rivers  and  fertile  plains  and  sounding  shores,” 

“  Could  find  commodious  place  for  every  God.” 

“In  despite 

Of  the  gross  fictions  chanted  in  the  streets 
By  wandering  rhapsodists,  and  in  contempt. 

Of  doubt  and  blind  denial,  hourly  urged 
Amid  the  wrangling  schools,  a  spirit  hung, 

Beautiful  vision,  o’er  thy  towns  and  farms, 

Statues  and  temples  and  memorial  tombs'; 

And  emanations  were  perceived  ;  and  acts 
Of  immortality,  in  Nature’s  course, 

Exemplified  by  mysteries  that  were  felt 
As  bonds  on  grave  Philosopher  imposed 
And  armed  warrior ;  and  in  every  grove 
A  gay  or  pensive  tenderness  prevailed, 

When  Piety  more  awful  had  relaxed.” 


45 


“  And  doubtless  sometimes  a  thought  arose 
Of  Life  continuous,  Being  unimpaired: 

That  hath  been,  is,  and  where  it  was  and  is, 
Then  shall  endure — existence  unexposed 
To  the  blind  walk  of  mortal  accident ; 

From  diminution  safe,  and  weakening  age, 
While  man  grows  old  and  dwindles  and  decays ; 
And  countless  generations  of  Mankind 
Depart,  and  leave  no  vestige  where  they  trod.” 


Trust  me,  none  is  wholly  without  God  in  the  world.  Even  in  the  wick¬ 
edest  of  men  there  must  be  yet  some  line  of  light  lying  along  their  horizon, 
where  the  great  Heavenly  Sun,  ur^een,  unknown,  refracts  his  rays  in  the 
dense  air,  and,  stooping  down,  touches  with  fire  the  edge  of  their  little 
kingdom  of  earth ;  at  least  some  little  Northern  Light  of  superstition, 
which  is  also  a  dawn,  flickers  in  their  cold,  cloudy  sky :  else  in  their  Arctic 
winter,  even  piratical  murderers  or  manstealing,  dogs  would  go  mad  at 
feeling  such  Egyptian  darkness,  and  would  die  outright. 

But  yet  there  are,  certainly,  great  differences  among  men  in  respect  to 
their  internal  Consciousness  of  Religion.  In  our  great  towns  there  are  mil- 
lionnaires ;  also  are  there  paupers,  beggars  there.  What  an  odds  between 
these  devotees  of  money !  So  are  there  likewise  paupers  of  religious  con¬ 
sciousness,  clad  with  but  a  few  rags  of  pious  experience,  rudely  stitched 
with  an  oath  or  a  momentary  aspiration,  pasted  together  here  and 
there  with  religious  fear — a  covering  all  too  scant — and  through  the 
loops  and  rents  of  this  spiritual  raiment  the  hitter  winds  of  life  blow  in 
upon  the  smarting  soul.  There  are  also  great  Capitalists  of  Religion,  Mil- 
lionnaires  of  Piety  and  Morality,  whose  long  life  industriously  spent  in  holy 
feeling,  holy  thinking,  holy  work,  has  given  them  a  great  real  and  personal 
Estate  of  Religion,  whence  they  have  now  a  daily  income  of  spiritual  de¬ 
light.  This  triumph  of  the  soul  you  often  find  in  men  of  no  outward  dis¬ 
tinction,  sometimes  furnished  with  but  little  learning — the  religious  their 
only  spiritual  wealth.  But  the  highest  religious  delight  is  not  found  in 
these  monsters  of  piety,  only  in  well-proportioned  characters,  when  all  the 
faculties  are  fully  grown  and  trained  up  well.  For  the  religious  is  a  mix¬ 
ture  likewise  of  all  other  joys,  and,  like  manna,  “hath  the  taste  of  all  in  it.” 

It  is  not  fair  to  expect  much  religious  experience  in  the  Child.  Rever¬ 
ence  for  the  All-in- All,  gratitude  for  his  genial  providence,  the  disposition 
to  trust  this  Divine  Mother,  and  to  keep  the  laws  of  conscience,  that  is  all 
we  should  commonly  look  for  at  an  early  age.  The  fair  fruits  of  religion 
come  only  at  a  later  day,  not  in  April  or  May,  but  only  in  September  and 
October.  Nay,  there  are  winter-fruits  of  religion,  which  are  not  fully 
ripe  till  the  trees  bloom  again,  and  the  grandfather  of  fourscore  years,  sees 
the  little  plants  flowering  under  his  shadow  ;  not  till  then,  perhaps,  are  the 
great  rich  winter  pears  of  religion  fully  perfect  in  their  luscious  ripeness. 

Yet  the  religious  disposition  is  a  blessed  thing,  even  in  childhood. 
How  it  inclines  the  little  boy  or  girl  to  veneration  and  gratitude — virtues, 


46 


which  in  the  child  are  what  good  breeding  is  in  the  full-grown  gentleman, 
giving  a  certain  air  of  noble  birth  and  well-bred  superiority.  There  is  a 
Jacob’s  ladder  for  our  young  pilgrim,  whereon  he  goes  up  from  his  earthly 
mother,  who  manages  the  little  room  he  sleeps  in,  to  the  dear  Heavenly 
Mother,  who  never  slumbers  nor  sleeps,  who  is  never  careful  and  troubled 
about  any  thing,  but  yet  cares  continually  for  the  great  housekeeping  of 
all  the  world,  giving  likewise  to  her  beloved  even  in  their  sleep.  In  the 
child  it  is  only  the  faint  twilight,  the  beginnings  of  religion  which  you  take 
notice  of,  like  the  voice  of  the  bluebird,  and  the  Phoebe,  coming  early  in 
March,  but  only  as  a  prelude  to  that  whole  summer  of  joyous  song,  which, 
when  the  air  is  delicate,  will  ere  long  gladden  and  beautify  the  procreant 
nest. 

Painful  is  it  to  see  a  child  whose  religious  culture  has  been  neglected ; 
the  heavenly  germ  attempting  growth,  but  checked  by  weeds,  which  no 
motherly  hand  plucks  up  or  turns  away.  More  painful  to  see  it  forced  to 
unnatural  hot-bed  growth,  to  be  succeeded  by  helpless  imbecility  at  last. 
Worse  still  to  find  the  young  soul  cursed  with  false  doctrines,  which  film 
over  the  eye  till  it  cannot  see  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  rising  with  such 
healing  in  his  beams,  and  make  life  a  Great  Dark  Day,  hideous  with  fear 
and  devils,  and  amazed  with  the  roar  of  greedy  hell !  Such  ill-entreated 
souls  often  grow  idiotic  in  their  religious  sense,  or  else,  therein  stark  mad 
and  penned  up  in  churches  and  other  asylums,  mope  and  gibber  in  their 
hideous  bereavement,  thinking  “  man  is  totally  depraved,”  and  God  a  great 
ugly  devil,  an  almighty  cat,  who  worries  his  living  prey,  tormenting  them 
before  their  time,  and  will  forever  tear  them  to  pieces  in  the  never-ending 
agony  of  hell!  It  is  terrible  to  hear  the  sermons,  hymns,  and  prayers, 
which  these  unfortunates  wail  out  in  their  religious  folly  or  delirium.  To 
cause  one  of  these  little  ones  to  offend  in  that  way,  it  were  better  that  a 
millstone  were  hanged  about  the  father  or  the  mother’s  neck,  and  they 
were  drowned  in  the  depths  of  the  sea.  I  say  it  is  but  the  beginning  of 
religion  that  we  find  in  the  tender  age ;  twilight  or  sunrise,  seldom  more. 
The  time  of  piety  is  not  yet.  Blame  not  the  little  tree;  in  due  season  it 
will  litter  the  ground  with  purple  figs. 

In  later  years  you  see  the  flowers  of  religion,  you  taste  the  fruit  of  its 
gladdening  consciousness  of  God.  In  early  manhood  there  are  temptations 
of  instinctive  passion,  which  clamors  for  its  object,  and  cares  but  little 
with  what  its  hungry  maw  is  fed.  In  later  manhood,  there  are  tempta¬ 
tions  of  ambition,  a  subtler  and  more  deceitful  peril.  I  know  nothing  but 
religion  that  is  commonly  able  to  defend  us  from  either';  this  is  strong 
enough  for  each,  for  both  together. 

Young  Esau  is  hungry;  the  pottage  is  savory.  Desire  from  within 
leagues  with  Occasion  from  without.  “No  other  eye  is  on  me,”  quoth 
he.  His  pulses  throb  ;  the  lightning,  the  earthquake,  the  fire  of  passion, 
pass  with  swift  tumultuous  roar  along  his  consciousness.  But  the  nice 
ear  of  Conscience  listens  to  the  still  small  voice  of  Duty,  “Remember 


47 

now  thy  Creator  in  the  clays  of  thy  youth.”  He  turns  him  off  from 
her  snare,  charm  she  never  so  wisely,  and  if  he  fail  of  the  pottage, 
he  is  not  poisoned  with  the  wild-gourds  stirred  therein ;  with  chaste 
hand  he  keeps  his  birthright  of  integrity.  “  Wherewith  shall  a  young  man 
cleanse  his  ways  ?  ”  asks  young  Esau,  but  from  his  religious  soul  the  an¬ 
swer  straightway  comes :  u  By  taking  heed  to  the  law  of  Duty,  clearly 
writ  and  plain  to  read.”  He  drinks  clean  water  out  of  his  own  sweet 
spring,  and  thirsts  no  more  for  the  tepid  tanks  of  vice,  dirty  and  defiling. 
His  natural  passion  is  directed  by  its  natural  master,  and  what  is  so  often 
the  foe  of  youth  becomes  his  ally  and  invigorating  friend. 

In  a  later  day  more  dangerous  lusts  invade  the  maturer  man.  Jonas  is 
alone  in  his  place  of  business  now.  It  is  late ;  all  the  clerks  have  gone 
home,  the  shutters  are  closed,  the  fire  smoulders  low  in  the  grate.  The 
gas  is  thriftily  turned  down ;  by  the  dim  light  I  cannot  see  whether  the 
counting-room  opens  into  factory,  grocery,  haberdashery,  warehouse,  or 
bank.  I  but  distinctly  see  the  desk — symbolic  furniture  for  all  the  five, 
with  many  more — and  an  anxious  man  heavy  with  long-continued  doubt. 
It  is  the  man  of  business  in  his  temptation — nay,  his  Agony  and  Bloody 
Sweat.  Hot  Jesus  in  the  Hew  Testament  legend  was  more  sorely  tempted 
of  another  Devil.  “  Shall  I  attempt  this  plan  ?  ”  quoth  he.  What  it  is 
appears  not — importing  Coolies,  or  African  slaves,  cheating  the  govern¬ 
ment  or  the  people — this  only  is  clear,  he  intends  some  great  wrong  to 
other  men.  “  I  can  do  it — ’twill  certainly  succeed — no  man  shall  find  it 
out.  Then  wealth  is  mine — that  is  Nobility  in  a  Democracy :  with  it 
comes  the  Power,  the  Respectability  and  the  Honor  it  bestows.”  They 
flit  before  him — a  great  city  house  wheels  into  line  ;  a  great  country  house 
follows,  flanked  with  wide  lav/ns  and  costly  gardens — a  whole  world  of 
beauty.  He  sees  such  visionary  entertainments,  new  flocks  of  wealthy 
friends,  obsequious  clergymen,  communing  at  any  table  where  Success 
breaks  the  bread  and  fills  the  cup,  no  matter  if  but  shewbread  and  wine  of 
iniquity.  He  tastes  the  admiration  of  men  who  worship  any  coin,  and 
care  not  if  it  bear  the  laureled  head  of  Liberty,  a  Northern  fair-faced 
maid,  or  only  a  Southern  Vulture  swooping  down  upon  its  human  prey. 
He  anticipates  the  wealthy  marriage  of  his  modest  girls.  He  sees  posts  of 
ambition  close  at  hand,  and  all  so  easy  for  mounting  up  to  if  he  be  but 
winged  with  gold.  “  All  this  will  I  give  thee,  yea,  and  much  more,”  says 
the  tempter,  “  for  they  are  mine,  and  where  I  will  I  bestow  them.  I, 
Mammon,  dwell  with  honor ;  Glory  is  mine,  and  Respectability ;  my  fruit 
is  better  than  virtue.  The  love  of  riches  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 
Money  crieth  without,  she  uttereth  her  voice  in  the  streets,  How  long,  ye 
honest  ones,  will  ye  love  simplicity  ?  Whoso  hearkeneth  unto  me  shall 
dwell  safely,  and  shali  be  quiet  from  fear  of  evil.  Did  any  ever  trust  in 
wealth  and  was  confounded  ?  Look  about  you :  how  did  Mr.  Short- 
weight  gain  his  millions?  Yet  what  honor  he  lived  in !  Colleges  named 
him  Doctor  of  Laws,  and  not  Banker.  In  funeral  sermons  ministers  put 
him  among  the  saints.  Come  thou  and  do  likewise.  Money  answereth 
all  things,  and  is  imputed  unto  men  for  righteousness !  ” 


48 


“  Shall  I  also  climb  that  popular  ladder  ?  ”  asks  tortured  Jonas.  But 
presently  it  seems  as  if  his  mother’s  form  bent  over  him.  It  is  the  same 
sweet  face  which  was  once  so  often  pressed  to  his,  as  she  stilled  his  aching 
flesh  and  kissed  his  little  griefs  away.  His  ear  tingles  warm  again,  as  if 
that  mouth,  long  silent  now,  breathed  into  it  her  oft-repeated  word, 
“  Only  the  Right  is  acceptable  with  GodJ’  “  Get  you  behind  me, 
Devils  all,”  cries  he.  They  vanish  into  the  cold  ashes  of  his  grate,  while 
the  fair  angel  that  we  name  Religion,  disguised  in  his  mother’s  saintly 
shape,  comes  back  and  ministers  to  him.  He  goes  home  a  strong  man ; 
but  dreams  that  night  that  he  was  shipwrecked,  and  in  the  wildest  storm 
his  mother  came  and  trod  the  waters  under  her,  and  brought  him  safe  to 
land.  Then  turns  he,  and  dreams  again  that  he  was  falling,  falling,  falling 
through  the  dark,  never  so  long  and  far  away,  and  that  same  strong-winged 
angel  swept  between  him  and  the  ground,  and  bore  him  off  unhurt,  repeat¬ 
ing  with  its  sweet  motherly  voice  : 

“  Only  the  Right  is  acceptable  with  God  !  ” 

He  wakes  for  honest  toil  and  manly  duty,  with  its  dear  and  tranquil 
joys;  and  all  day  long  that  holy  Psalm  keeps  quiring  in  his  heart : 

“  Only  the  Right  is  acceptable  with  God  !  ” 

How  soothing  is  Religion  in  sprrow !  It  is  her  only  boy :  Rachel 
could  not  save  him.  The  girls  were  thinned  out  one  by  one.  Sickness 
made  them  only  dearer.  Death  plucked  them,  flower  after  flower.  When 
he  shook  the  family  bush,  how  sadly  did  those  white  roses  cast  their  petals 
on  the  wind !  The  corner  of  the  village  grave-yard  seems  snowed  all  over 
with  mementoes  of  what  has  been.  The  father,  too,  is  gone  now.  In 
sleep  her  arms  fold  together,  but  only  on  emptiness,  as  Love  calls  up  the 
dear  figure  to  cheat  and  avoid  her  grasp.  Poor  Rachel !  all  alone  now ! 
and  dreams  add  their  visionary  woe  to  the  live  sorrows  of  the  waking  day. 
Now  the  last  one  lies  there,  straightened  after  death,  a  red  rose  put  in  his 
hand.  It  is  the  room  he  was  born  in.  Her  bridal  chamber  once  is  his 
funeral  chamber  now — the  beginning  of  her  hopes,  the  end  of  her  disap¬ 
pointments — a  porch  only  to  so  many  graves.  How  fair  he  looks,  the 
brown  hair  clustered  round  his  brow.  Since  death,  in  the  dead  boy  she 
sees  the  father’s  face  come  out  more  fair,  just  as  he  looked  when  she  was 
eight  and  Robert  ten,  and  they  gathered  chestnuts  in  the  woods,  he  alone 
with  her  and  she  alone  with  him ;  he  bearing  the  little  sack  their  mutual 
hands  had  filled,  when  neither  knew  nor  dreamed  those  little'  trodden  paths 
would  lead  to  marriage,  and  their  mutual  hand  fill  many  a  sack  of  joys  and 
sorrows  too.  In  the  same  face  she  sees  her  lover  and  her  child — both  dead 
now.  That  handsome  bud  will  never  be  a  flower.  No  maiden  shall 
salute  those  cheeks  with  the  first  stealthy  modest  kiss  of  heavenly  love. 
The  real  present  and  the  ideal  future  meet  there,  and  Rachel  sits  between, 
the  point  common  to  both ;  a  wife  without  a  husband,  a  mother  with  no 
child.  Poor  Rachel !  Is  there  any  consolation  ?  She  feels  the  Infinite 
Rather  is  with  her :  he  loves  her  husband  better  than  she  loved  him,  when 


49 


passion  melted  the  twain  to  one;  loves  the  child  better  than  she  loved  her 
lost  one,  her  only  one — her  Boy.  The  Infinite  Father  is  with  her.  In  her 
-early  love  she  looked  to  him  and  was  not  ashamed.  That  day-star  of  Piety 
gleamed  white  in  the  roseate  flush  of  her  maiden  love;  through  the  throb¬ 
bing  joy  of  her  bridal  she  looked  up  to  the  Infinite  One,  Father  of  bride¬ 
groom  and  of  bride.  When  one  by  one  those  little  sprigs  pushed  out 
'from  the  married  boughs,  Bachel  remembered  him  who  never  forgets  us 
in  our  heedlessness,  thankful  for  the  old  life  continued,  the  new  life  lent. 
Does  she  now  forget  the  Bock  whence  our  earthly  houses  be  hewed  out 
and  builded  up? 

The  neighbors  look  on  the  surface  of  her  life — how  disturbed  it  is,  the 
great  deep  all  broken  up!  But  underneath  it  all,  below  the  troubled  depth 
of  her  sorrow,  there  is  a  deeper  deep  whereto  she  goes  down.  It  is  all  still 
there,  and.  face  to  face,  she  communes  with  Him  who  will  be  with  us  in 
deep  waters.  In  the  ecstasy  of  grief  she  finds  that  settled  joy  of  heart 
which  transcends  all  other  joys.  She  looks  into  another  world  and  sees 
her  white  rosebuds,  and  the  last,  the  red,  open  in  the  light  of  heaven  and 
^flower  out  to  fairer  maiden  and  manly  beauty  than  earth  knows  of  in  tem¬ 
perate  or  in  tropic  lands !  while  amid  those  dear  ones  the  mortal  father,  im¬ 
mortal  now,  who  went  before  his  boy,  walks  like  a  gardener  among  his 
plants,  and  makes  ready  also  a  place  for  her!  “  Thy  will,  not  mine  be 
done  ;  it  is  well  with  the  child.”  She  needs  no  other  prayer.  The  Com¬ 
forter  has  come,  that  same  Comforter  who  was  in  the  beginning  and 
^cheered  the  hearts  of  millions  before  the  name  of  Jesus  was  ever  spoke 
•on  land  or  sea.  Poor  Bachel,  is  it  ?  Then  who,  I  ask,  is  rich  ?  Hence¬ 
forth  she  has  a  charmed  life,  her  smiles  fewer  but  serener  and  more 
heartfelt.  The  air  is  cool  and  delicate  about  her ;  the  endemics  of  the 
ground  can  stir  no  fever  in  that  tranquil  blood.  Her  great  sorrow  has 
seemed  a  great  religion,  which  fills  her  with  stillness.  A  wife  without  a 
husband,  a  mother  without  a  living  child,  is  she  alone,  think  you  ?  The 
Infinite  Father  is  with  her,  in  her,  and  she  also  in  him.  Call  not  that 
lonely  which  is  so  densely  populate  with  God. 

How  the  winds  blow  on  the  surface,  at  the  human  level ;  with  what 
wrathful  sweep  tread  those  posters  of  the  sea  and  land !  Go  a  few  furlongs 
up,  and  you  have  left  the  whirlwind  behind  you ;  you  are  above  the 
^thunder,  and  beneath  your  feet  the  harmless  lightnings  flash  unheard 
away  ;  all  the  noises  of  Sebastopol  and  Waterloo  roll  by  and  leave  no  mark 
on  the  most  delicate  ear.  Even  the  earthquake  is  not  felt  in  that  calm 
deep  of  the  upper  air !  On  the  sea,  go  down  not  many  rods, 

“  The  water  ia  calm  and  still  below, 

For  the  winds  and  waves  are  noiseless  there, 

And  the  sands  are  bright  as  the  stars  that  glow 
In  the  motionless  field  of  upper  air. 

And  life,  in  rare  and  beautiful  forms, 

Is  sporting  amid  those  bowers  of  stone, 

And  ia  safe  when  the  wrathful  spirit  of  storms 
Has  made  the  top  of  the  wave  his  own.”  j 

4 


50 


How  old  and  gray-headed  Mi'.  Grandfather  is.  At  Boston,  in  1783,. 
he  heard  the  bells  ring  for  Peace,  which  meant  also  Independence.  His 
thoughtful  mother,  not  without  prayers,  watched  his  cradle  at  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  the  storm  of  Revolution.  Now  he  is  old,  very  old.  He  has  been 
out  on  the  sea  of  life  and  done  business  in  its  great  waters.  Many  a  proud 
wave  has  gone  over  him.  But  he  got  through.  Children  and  children’s 
children  are  the  crown  of  triumph  for  his  old  age.  Yet  he  is  more  reli¬ 
gious  than  old.  He  stoops  a  little  now,  and  sometimes  slumbers  in  his  chair. 
The  mists  of  the  valley  which  all  must  tread  lie  spread  out  before  him,, 
white  with  the  moonlight  of  old  age.  Of  a  pleasant  day  he  sallies  forth, 
staff  in  hand,  this  (Edipus,  who  has  met  the  Sphynx  of  time  and  solved 
the  great  riddle  of  life,  and  he  wonders  li  where  the  old  people  are?’* 
How  young  the  world  looks  to  his  experienced  eyes !  He  lifts  his  hat  to 
some  venerable  man  whom  he  saw  christened  in  the  meeting-house  so 
long  ago  that  the  ink  has  turned  brown  on  the  yellow  paper  in  the  parish 
book.  There  is  a  funeral  to-day  of  a  white-haired  woman,  old,  very  old. 
Mr.  Grandfather  remembers  her  as  a  chubby  little  rosy-cheeked  maiden, 
with  black  hair,  and  eyes  so  full  of  fun,  just  getting  into  her  teens  when  he 
was  but  half-way  there.  Now  he  reads  on  the  silver  plate,  u  Aged  XCIV.” 
“  Ninety -four  ?  ”  quoth  he,  u  a  great  age.  Yes,  I  knew  she  was  about 
that !  A  great  age.  Fourscore  and  fourteen !  Six  more,  and  it  is  a  hun¬ 
dred.”  He  remembers  the  green-gages  she  used  to  give  him  out  of  her 
father’s  great  garden ;  now  it  is  built  all  over  with  huge  granite  stores, 
four  stories  high,  and  the  pear  trees  and  plums  which  Mr.  Blackstone 
brought  over  from  England  have  followed  their  planter  long  since.  He 
remembers  her  wedding — seventy-six  years  ago  last  July,  boy  of  twelve 
that  he  was.  On  the  plain  table  of  those  “  good  old  times  ”  he  set  a  china 
bowl  of  white  lilies,  which  he  swam  for  in  Hammond’s  Pond  that  morn¬ 
ing,  to  honor  his  pretty  cousin’s  marriage  with.  It  was  the  first  time  they 
ever  had  such  flowers  at  a  Puritan  wedding ;  but  the  minister  liked  it,  so 
did  cousin  Lucy,  but  the  new  cousin  thought  only  of  her  who  made  him 
so  happy.  u  Now  she  is  clad  for  another  change,”  quoth  Mr.  Grandfather, 
as  he  lays  his  last  gift  of  blossoms  on  her  coffin ;  “  always  a  little  before  me, 
never  long ;  born  seven  years  first,  wed  twelve  years  before  me.  We  shall 
meet  again  before  long.  This  is  the  last  of  earth  for  you  ;  soon  it  will  be 
for  me.  Well,  I  am  content.  ‘  Shock,  of  corn  fully  ripe  ’ — let  the  dear 
Father  come  and  take  of  his  planting,  at  the  great  Harvest  Home.  To 
die  is  also  gain.” 

That  night  Mr.  Grandfather  tarries  late  in  his  sitting-room,  when  tho 
rest  are  gone  to  bed.  He  slept  a  little  after  supper  in  his  great  arm  chair, 
and  is  quite  wakeful  now.  The  old  clock  stands  there  ;  it  tells  the  hours 
of  human  time;  nay,  with  delicate  hand  it  marks  even  the  seconds,  just 
as  life  itself  will  always  do.  It  reports  likewise  the  days  of  the  month  and 
of  the  week,  the  shape  of  the  moon ;  on  the  top  of  all  is  a  ship  at  sea, 
rising  and  falling  by  wheel  work,  as  if  driven  by  the  wind  and  tossed. 
Mr.  Grandfather  looks  into  his  wood  fire,,  and  then  all  the  long  voyage  of 


51 


his  past  life  comes  pictured  to  him  from  his  cradle  to  cousin  Lucy’s  fune¬ 
ral.  There  are  sad  things  to  look  on,  which  bring  back  a  tear;  he  did  not 
know  it  tilll  it  fell  hot  on  his  hand  and  made  him  start.  There  are  joyous 
things  als  o,  which  set  his  heart  throbbing  as  when  he  was  a  bridegroom. 
Nay,  tli ere  are  wrong  things  which  he  did,  repented  of,  and  outgrew  so 
long  ,  ago  that  they  seem  merely  historical,  like  the  sins  of  Abraham, 
Isa:ac,  and  Jacob ;  yet  he  remembers  the  lesson  they  taught.  His  boyish 
hoves  return — father  and  mother,  children — nay,  children’s  children.  The 
wife  of  his  heart,  reverently  buried  years  ago,  comes  back  in  bridal  gar¬ 
ments,  then  sits  at  the  new  cradle.  Then  another  funeral  rushes  on  his 
sight:  “Lover and  friend  thou  puttest  far  from  me,  and  mine  acquaintance 
into  darkness,”  quoth  he.  “  Nay,  nay,  not  into  darkness  ;  say  rather  into 
marvellous  light !  My  time  is  not  far  off.  How  long,  O  Lord  ?  How 
soon?  Speak,  Lord,  for  thy  servant  heareth.”  The  old  clock  strikes 
twelve  ;  the  first  day  of  another  month  comes  into  its  place,  and  the  new 
moon  lifts  its  silver  rim  to  tell  below  what  heavenly  life  goes  on  above. 
“  Soon  shall  I  behold  thy  face  in  righteousness,  and  I  shall  be  satisfied, 
when  I  awake,  with  thy  likeness.” 


I  wonder  any  man  can  be  content  to  live  without  the  joyous  conscious¬ 
ness  of  God ;  without  this  how  any  one  can  bear  the  griefs  of  time,  I 
know  not,  nor  cannot  even  dream.  I  would  be  certain  that  my  little  ven¬ 
ture  is  insured  at  the  Provident  office  of  the  Infinite  God;  then  shall  I 
fear  no  shipwreck,  but  steer  my  personal  craft  as  best  I  may,  certain  of 
a  harbor;  and  though  it  be  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  I  am  safe  landed 
in  heaven.  If  I  have  well  done  my  part,  and  where  or  when  it  may,  I 
am  sure  the  voyage  will  turn  out  fortunate. 

O  young  men  and  young  women ;  men  and  Avomen  no  longer 
young!  It  is  not  enough  to  be  brave  and  thoughtful;  not  enough  to  be 
moral  also,  and  friendly  each  to  each.  You  have  a  Faculty  which  makes 
another  World  for  you,  the  World  of  God.  There  is  a  joy  which  is  not  in 
Avisdom,  with  all  its  science  and  its  art  of  beauty  and  of  use  ;  nor  yet  in 
Morality,  with  its  grand  works  of  justice  ;  nay,  nor  yet  even  in  the  sweet 
felicity  of  loving  men  and  being  loved  in  turn  by  them ;  there  is  a  life 
within  the  Veil  of  the  Temple  ;  it  is  the  Life  with  God,  the  Innermost  De¬ 
light  of  human  Consciousness.  Animated  by  that  your  Wisdom  shall  be 
greater,  more  true  your  Science,  and  more  fair  your  Art ;  your  Morality 
more  firm  and  sure,  your  Love  to  men  more  joyous  and  abiding,  your 
whole  Character  made  useful,  and  beautiful  exceed ingty. 


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